Regenerative agriculture is the next great ally in fight against climate change

Nancy Pfund
Contributor

Nancy Pfund is founder and managing partner of DBL Partners, a venture capital company whose aim is to combine top-tier financial returns with meaningful societal, environmental and financial returns in both regions and sectors in which it invests.

It appears that each and every week a new agribusiness, consumer packaged goods company, lender, tech firm, actress or Facebook buddy declares assistance for regenerative agriculture.

For all those of us who have been working on climate and/or agriculture solutions for the previous few decades, this is both exciting and worrisome.

With all the rush to be part of something so important, the particulars and difficult work, the incremental progress and wins, in addition to the big, hairy problems that remain can be overlooked or forgotten. When numerous are looking for the fences, it’s easy to overlook that doubles and singles normally win the game.

As a working partner and founder of DBL Partners, I have sought out organizations to invest because not just have winning business units but also address the planet’s biggest problems. I believe that agriculture can be a major climate alternative while feeding an increasing population.

At exactly the same time, I wish to temper the hype, calms the dialogue and apply the illustration of agriculture to forge a fruitful template for all business sectors with carbon habits to fight climate change.

To begin with, let’s define regenerative agriculture: It encompasses practices such as cover cropping and conservation tillage which, among other things, build soil health, improve water retention, and sequester and abate carbon.

The extensive excitement around regenerative agriculture is connected to its potential to mitigate climate impact . The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine quotes that land sequestration has the potential to eliminate over 250 million metric tons of CO2 per year, equal to five% of U.S. emissions.

It is necessary to remember that regenerative practices are not new. Conservationists have advocated for cover cropping and reduced tillage for a long time , and most also farmers have led the bill.

The reason why these practices are recently honored today is that, when executed at scale, together with all the heft of new technologies and invention, they have shown agriculture’s potential to lead the struggle against climate change.

So how can we empower farmers in this carbon fight?

Today, offset markets receive nearly all the attention. Multiple private, voluntary markets such as land carbon have appeared in the previous few years, largely supported by corporations driven by carbon neutrality obligations to offset their carbon emissions using credit purchases.

Offset markets are a key step toward developing agriculture a catalyst for a large-scale climate alternative; organizations that support private carbon emissions build capacity and the financial incentive to reduce emissions.

“Farming carbon” can drive demand for corrective finance mechanics, data analytics tools and new technologies like nitrogen-fixing biologicals — each of imperatives to maximize the adoption and influence of corrective procedures and spur entrepreneurship and innovation.

It’s these improvements, and not the carbon credit offsets themselves, which will permanently lower agriculture emissions.

Offsets are a start, but they’re only a part of this solution. Whether produced by forestry, renewable energy, transport or agriculture, offsets must be purchased by organizations year after year, and don’t automatically decrease a buyer’s footprint.

Inevitably, every business sector needs to decarbonize its footprint directly or make “insets” by lowering the emissions within its distribution chain. The question is, this is not yet economically viable or logistically feasible for each and every company.

For organizations that buy and process agricultural goods — from food organizations to renewable fuel producers — land carbon offsets can indirectly reduce emissions immediately while also funding plans that immediately reduce emissions permanently, beginning in the farm.

DBL invests in ag businesses which work on either side of the coin: easing soil carbon offset generation and setting a credit market whilst also building basically more efficient and less carbon-intensive agribusiness supply chains.

This approach is a smart investment for agriculture players seeking to reduce their climate impact. The business model also generates demand for environmental services from farmers using real staying power.

Way back in 2006, once DBL initially spent in Tesla, we’d no idea we’d be helping to create a worldwide move to unhinge transport from fossil fuels.

It ’s agriculture’s turn. Backed by inventions in science, big data, financing and farmer media, investing in biomedical agriculture claims to slash farming’s carbon footprint while still farmers for their stewardship.

Future generations will benefit from the advantages of this transition, all the while asking, “What happened? ”

Corporate sustainability initiatives may open doors to get carbon counter startups

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