For Landowners
What Makes Us Different
Landowners have several forest carbon programs to evaluate and enroll in, some with national reach and other more regional options. While these programs all provide revenue opportunities based on capturing, storing, and the sale of forest carbon, there are several factors that set the Family Forest Carbon Program apart.
Our Competitive Advantage
501c3 Nonprofit
The Family Forest Carbon Program is the only not-for-profit enterprise offering a comprehensive forest carbon program for family-owned forestland. This means that the revenue from the sale of carbon credits is put back into achieving our mission, primarily by paying landowners annual payments. We do not have investors or shareholders seeking to make profits from the work you’re doing with your woods.
Terms of Agreement
Our 20-year enrollment period is considerably shorter than many other programs, many of which have enrollment periods that range from 40-85 years.
Annual Payments
We pay predictable and reliable annual fees per acre of enrolled land, taking on the market risk, guaranteeing payments to landowners regardless of the state of the voluntary carbon market.
Harvest Allowance
The Family Forest Carbon Program offers the most generous harvest allowance. Many other programs do not allow harvests or have significant harvest restrictions.
Organizational History
We are backed by the American Forest Foundation, which has an 80+ year history supporting and working with family forest owners, including managing programs like the American Tree Farm System.
Dynamic Baselines: A Gold Standard for Carbon Accounting Methodology
We have developed a new forest carbon accounting methodology to measure and verify the carbon sequestered and stored by the landowners in our program. It brings the latest science together with innovative business models to provide a more accurate measurement of the carbon benefit.
Unlike other carbon credit methodologies, the Family Forest Carbon Program does not use a projected baseline. Rather, it uses a dynamic baseline. This means that our methodology compares the carbon sequestered on land enrolled in the program to highly comparable forests that are not enrolled in the program—in real time. By measuring the difference between the forests, our methodology can pinpoint the Family Forest Carbon Program as the variable that contributed to the carbon benefit—providing increased accuracy and transparency.
This new methodology is approved by Verra, the globally recognized nonprofit organization that oversees the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS).