By Josh McClain, Creekside Carbon co-founder
I started farming when I was 17 years old with 300 acres in northwest Kansas. Today, my family farms around 15,000 acres, and we’ve built businesses alongside the farm because that’s what modern agriculture demands. My wife, my kids, our employees — everybody is part of this operation every single day. Farming isn’t just what we do. It’s our life.
Out here, moisture is our number one resource. We don’t farm in a place where you can waste water or make bad decisions for very long. Every year forces you to think about efficiency, resilience, and risk. And the reality is, farmers today are carrying more pressure than most people realize.
Input costs keep rising. Commodity prices swing wildly. Corporate consolidation has squeezed farmers from both sides — what we buy and what we sell. Add tariffs, uncertainty, and weather on top of that, and it becomes harder every year for family farms to stay profitable.
Around rural America, farmers are not getting their loans renewed to continue their farming operations, neighbors and friends are having to take over the operation if they can get the financing themselves. Normally expansion is a thing to celebrate, but when it comes at the expense of a friends business, it’s not.
This is all part of why Creekside Carbon exists.
But before I get there, I think it’s important to explain how I look at farming itself.
Farming Isn’t About Going Backward
People throw around the phrase “regenerative agriculture” like it means going backward in time or farming the way our grandparents did. That’s not how I see it.
For me, regenerative agriculture means using every tool available — technology, biology, data, better practices — to leave the farm better for the next generation than it was when we got it.
We lean heavily into technology on our operation. I can track every piece of equipment from my phone. We use drones, precision application, see-and-spray systems that target weeds instead of spraying whole fields. We test biologicals. We constantly evaluate new practices that can help us raise more bushels with fewer inputs.
That’s the goal: increase productivity while reducing waste and improving the soil underneath us.
The challenge is that sustainability has to make economic sense.
Farmers can’t survive on good intentions alone.
Farmers Carry the Risk
One thing I wish more people understood is that farmers are constantly being asked to take on more risk with less certainty. We’re expected to adopt new practices, buy expensive equipment, absorb volatile markets, and somehow continue feeding the country while margins get tighter every year.
A lot of sustainability programs sound good in theory, but many of them ask farmers to spend money today and maybe see benefits years down the road — if they see them at all.
That’s a hard sell when you’re trying to keep a farm operating through another season.
The truth is, if you want farmers to adopt practices that improve soil health, reduce emissions, conserve water, or build resilience, you have to pay them fairly and you have to pay them sooner.
That’s the missing piece. And that’s exactly why we built Creekside Carbon.
Why Creekside Carbon Needs to Exist
I’ve spent years working with farmers through Firebolt Carbon. I’ve seen firsthand what works and what doesn’t.
The biggest problem in agriculture right now isn’t that farmers don’t want to improve their operations. It’s that the system makes farmers carry all the financial burden upfront while everybody else gets paid first. That’s backwards.
Every company that sells into agriculture wants their money up front. Farmers buy seed, fertilizer, fuel, and equipment months before harvest. But when it comes to sustainability or carbon programs, farmers are often expected to wait years before seeing a return.
That delay kills adoption.
Creekside Carbon was created because we believe farmers shouldn’t have to wait years to be rewarded for doing the right thing.
We want to accelerate payments to farmers so they can implement practices now — not someday when the market finally catches up.
We also wanted to create something different than a typical carbon company.
Most people in cities have never actually met the people growing their food. There’s a huge disconnect between consumers, corporations, and rural America. A lot of assumptions get made about farmers without anyone ever stepping onto a farm or seeing what modern agriculture actually looks like.
That disconnect hurts everybody.
So Creekside Carbon is also about bringing people together.
We want consumers, companies, and partners to come out to farms, walk fields, meet farm families, and understand what agriculture really looks like today.
Because once you see it firsthand, you realize farmers aren’t the problem. Farmers are part of the solution.
Building a Better System
At the end of the day, farmers want the same thing everybody else wants: to leave something better behind for their kids.
No farmer wakes up wanting to damage the land. We depend on the land. We live with the consequences of every decision we make.
But farmers also need a system that works economically.
Subsidies alone aren’t the answer. As I’ve said before, subsidies are like a bandaid that never fixed the knife wound.
What we really need is a system where farmers can get paid fairly for producing food and for implementing practices that improve the future of agriculture.
That’s what Creekside Carbon is trying to build.
A system where:
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Farmers are paid earlier
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Rural communities receive more investment
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Consumers understand where their food comes from
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Sustainability works economically and on the ground
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And the next generation actually wants to come back to the farm
Because if farming doesn’t become economically sustainable, none of the rest of this matters.
The Future of Agriculture
I’m optimistic about the future because agriculture is evolving faster right now than at any point in my career.
Technology is changing everything. Biologicals are improving. Carbon markets are growing. Companies are starting to care more about their supply chains. Consumers want to know more about how food is produced.
There’s real opportunity here — if we build systems that actually work for farmers.
That’s why Creekside Carbon exists.
We built Creekside Carbon because we believe farmers deserve a seat at the table — and because the future of regenerative agriculture starts with paying farmers today.