'Climate Smart Ag' Newsletter #2
The newsletter to keep you updated about news, initiatives around low carbon and sustainable crop production in France, Europe and outside of Europe.
Summary of this week:
Soil carbon market could grow quickly globally I FutureFarming
Fonterra, Nestlé, DairyNZ team up to expand plantain trial for dairy diets to reduce GHG emissions
What Is Needed to Unlock and Scale Regenerative Farming Incentives ? I PrecisionAg
Soil carbon market could grow quickly globally I FutureFarming
France
A new mechanism to finance the carbon balance sheets of young people who have settled in the region I TerreNet
Aimed at young people living in the area, the new "Good Carbon Diagnosis" system announced during the Apad webinar by the Ministry of Agriculture is part of the recovery plan. It aims to encourage farmers to carry out a carbon assessment and implement various actions to limit the impact of their practices on the climate. This measure, which will be operational in March 202.1, complements the low carbon label currently being deployed in France.
Field crops submit their low carbon method to the French ministry ecological transition I ArvalisInstitut
Building climate change mitigation projects as part of the ecological transition requires approved methodologies that ensure the quantification of avoided greenhouse gases (GHGs) and newly stored carbon in soils. The field crop sectors have entrusted their national technical institutes, with the support of Agrosolutions, with the task of developing this method. The method was deposited with the services of the Ministry of Ecological Transition on December 9, 2020 to obtain a validation at the beginning of 2021.
Officially launched on April 23, 2019, this label is the first French voluntary carbon offset project labeling system. Initiated and supervised by the Ministry of Ecological Transition, it was developed in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Its objective is to contribute to the achievement of France's climate objectives: carbon neutrality by 2050.
Europe
Soil carbon market could grow quickly globally I FutureFarming
Australia has led the world in terms of paying farmer for sequestrating carbon and reducing GHG.
Australia has a Paris Agreement target to reduce emissions by 26-28% of our 2005.
The province of Alberta, Canada has had its own carbon offset program since 2007.
In Europe, the EU Parliament had a plenary vote on the EU-wide Climate Law in October, moving the jurisdiction closer to a carbon credit market. Several pieces of related EU legislation, such as the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry regulation, are expected to be updated in 2021. In addition, the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee (COMAGRI) has proposed a soil carbon sequestration scheme.
Speaking with members, the foreseen timeline for the introduction of carbon farming exceeds five years at minimum.”
Even we foresee a rising demand for soil carbon sequestration regulation, we see that time will be needed to bring together all moving pieces.
Outside of Europe
Fonterra, Nestlé, DairyNZ team up to expand plantain trial for dairy diets to reduce GHG emissions
It is interesting to see that a milk processor with Fonterra, with DairyNZ, the industry organisation representing New Zealand’s dairy farmers and Nestlé that produces final milk-based products have team up for this project.
Now, Fonterra and Nestlé are helping expand the project further through additional funding and by sharing expertise.
Nestlé, the world’s largest food company and a customer of Fonterra’s, was keen to be involved in the Tararua project given the commitments it has made around sustainability.
We have seen in the previous newsletter how it can be difficult to associate different company to target supply chain or environnemental issues. We can see how it is profitable in order to speed up innovation and on-farm improvement.
What Is Needed to Unlock and Scale Regenerative Farming Incentives ? I PrecisionAg
The question to the panelist was : “How close do you think we are today to leveraging agriculture to drive nature-based climate solutions?”
It’s all about getting more data on soil health to prove its great outcomes to farmers. And not just any data: site-specific data, tailored to the individual farmer, their location, and their unique scaling challenges.
How can farmers be convinced to farm regeneratively beyond data and technology? By monetising their results.
That a really important point, in fact, on one hand farmer are entrepreneur that need to see a return on investment on any action taken. Panelists highlighted that carbon marketplace will be there for that.
The others points that has not been discuss is the fact that farmers will need to understand the impact of any changes of theirs practices in terms of ghg emission saving and theirs abilities to set up those new practices regarding theirs local context.
Others issue have been discussed :
Companies are still figuring out how to define carbon assets and quantify them between companies. “At this point, the buyers are trying to understand — well, what are all these different initiatives? How do they relate to one another? Are they using similar methodology?”
Data collectors, carbon markets, and farmers alike — must find a universal language of standards between them to make carbon markets as impactful, user friendly, transparent, and safe to use as possible.
Soil carbon market could grow quickly globally I FutureFarming
This article talk about Nori and their pilot project with Truterra. I would like to highlight the complementarity of the two partnership, in term of knowledge and capacity they have build in their respective digital platform. we can understand that on one side, Truterra bring :
A digital system that Land O’Lakes farmers already use to capture farm data will be employed to calculate the carbon removal impact of on-farm conservation practices and translate the results into potential carbon credits.
While on the other side, what is needed, and brought by Nori is :
The carbon market as a whole has recognised that the entire process of carbon measurement and verification must be streamlined.
Both are biting on the fact that they can show with their pilot :
It’s believed that the ease of the scheme will help growers quickly see the potential value of carbon credits they could achieve from using practices that sequester carbon in the soil and build its health.