Two brothers from Regina are planting 140,000 poplar trees on 160 hectares of marginal farmland near Edenwold and hoping to turn them into carbon credits and ultimately cold, hard cash.

Greenfield Carbon Offsetters Inc., the province’s first carbon offset farm, is also hoping to build a new, green industry in Saskatchewan, which has plenty of carbon emissions and farmland and trees with which to offset them. Kalen and Derrick Emsley, co-presidents of Greenfield and business students at the Paul J. Hill School of Business at the University of Regina, talked about building a green business in Saskatchewan when they were still in high school. The idea is simple enough. Grow trees on land not suitable for crops. Sell the carbon credits from the trees to companies that need carbon offsets. Plant the trees, wait for a few years, then start raking in the money.