February 17, 2024
Spotlight Stories
Spotlight 1 – Fast Company says that when trees are planted alongside crops, farms become more sustainable . Check out the story, here.
Spotlight 2 – Grist asks how much carbon farmers can store in their soil. The answer? Nobody’s sure. Check out the story, here.
Spotlight 3 – The World Economic Forum notes that extreme weather is driving food prices higher. These 5 crops are facing the biggest impacts. Check out the story, here.
Industry Updates
Texas commodity producers interested in improving the sustainability of their operations can apply to participate in the Texas Climate-Smart Initiative, spearheaded by Texas A&M AgriLife Research. The five-year project is designed to work with Texas producers to adopt climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices, assess the benefits of these practices and develop models for voluntary, market-based climate solutions. The size of the program is $65 million, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service. [link]
Cargill is introducing a sustainable agriculture program to help Australian canola growers connect with new and emerging markets with the launch of Cargill SustainConnect. The Cargill SustainConnect program will open new revenue streams for growers in Australia and assist Cargill in catering to the rising demand from domestic and international customers for sustainable Australian canola. Cargill SustainConnect builds on Cargill’s global efforts to make sustainable farming programs commonplace across its global supply chains, including its RegenConnect program in North America and Europe. [link]
Ceres Global Ag Corp. announced an exclusive agreement with Grupo Trimex, Mexico's largest flour miller, to collaboratively develop and execute regenerative agriculture initiatives across Canadian and U.S. hard red spring wheat supply sheds. The primary focus of the collaboration is the adoption of innovative agronomic practices and technologies that deliver positive outcomes at the farm gate, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and positively impacting other sustainability indicators such as biodiversity and water quality. [link]
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has greenlighted 48 FAO-led projects worth about $2.9 billion – comprised of $294 million in project financing and $2.6 billion in co-financing – that will play a pivotal role in fostering a sustainable agrifood systems transformation to end hunger and conserve the environment. The initiatives, benefitting 4.2 million people in five different regions globally, will restore more than 474,000 hectares of land; improve practices on over 24 million hectares of land and marine habitats; create and improve the management of over 2 million hectares of protected areas on land and sea; mitigate 133 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions; and remove 202 metric tons of hazardous agrochemicals. A total of 46 countries partnered with FAO to access finance from the GEF in this work program, including Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Afira, and Tunisia, among others. [link]
In her annual budget proposal, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has recommended $4 million for a Farm to Family Program, with a goal to support regenerative farming, agriculture supply chains and the promotion of Michigan food products in the home. While the Governor wants to focus on delivering local food to local people and building economic prosperity, Republican State Representative Dave Prestin said that the program should instead focus on the difficulties of distribution, noting that products from the farm to the end consumer need attention. [link]
A U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) study is underway tracking 10,000 Americans eating differentiated diets for six weeks around the country. The goal? Figure out a way to offer personalized diet advice based on a few simple medical tests. If the study succeeds, it could help Americans get healthier and cut through years of confusion about nutrition guidance. Scientists agree broadly on what constitutes a healthy diet—heavy on veggies, fruit, whole grains and lean protein—but more research is showing that different people respond differently to the same foods, such as bread or bananas. The study’s scientists will take the vast amounts of data they are collecting to create algorithms that, they hope, can predict what a particular diet will do for any one of us. [link]
Agricultural communities in Calapan, Philippines, are celebrating a sustainable future with the introduction of a solar-powered water pump project. Spearheaded by Yara Fertilizers Philippines, Inc., in collaboration with the Royal Norwegian Embassy, the initiative aims to revolutionize rice irrigation in Barangay Santa Cruz. The project, funded by a PHP 4 million grant, replaces traditional diesel-powered pumps, reducing costs, ensuring better profitability for farmers, and minimizing CO2 emissions. [link]
NITI Aayog, a public policy think tank in India, has unveiled the Greening and Restoration of Wasteland with Agroforestry (GROW) report and portal, aiming to bolster efforts in environmental conservation and sustainable land use across India. Utilizing cutting-edge remote sensing and GIS technologies, the report offers a comprehensive state-wide and district-wide analysis, providing crucial insights to government departments and industries engaged in greening and restoration projects. At its core, the report aims to evaluate the suitability of agroforestry practices across all districts of India. Additionally, it has introduced an Agroforestry Suitability Index (ASI) for national-level prioritization, utilizing thematic datasets. [link]
The UN Environment Program (UNEP) has announced seven new flagship restoration projects ahead of the 6th UN Environment Assembly, which will be held from Feb. 26 to Mar. 1 in Nairobi, Kenya. The projects - regarded by UNEP as role models for reversing ecosystem degradation at scale - are slated to restore a combined 40 million hectares of land in Africa, Latin America, the Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia. The newly announced World Restoration Flagships focus on restoring mangroves, forests, river basins, and degraded drylands with the support of national governments, UN agencies, and non-for-profit organizations. [link]
The Biden-Harris Administration announced that it made record investments in private lands conservation in fiscal year 2023 thanks to historic resources made available by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in climate action in history. In fiscal year 2023, USDA supported more than 45,000 conservation contracts, more than any year in the 89-year history of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), totaling over $2.8 billion in financial assistance to producers for conservation efforts. NRCS also released updated state-by-state data showing where investments went in FY2023 for resources provided under both the Farm Bill and Inflation Reduction Act. [link]
North Dakota and Minnesota farmers and ranchers may be eligible to participate in a national pilot program that will pay farmers and ranchers $100 an acre or an animal unit to implement conservation practices on their land. The Alliance to Advance Climate-Smart Agriculture will provide payments to producers in certain parts of each state for adopting or maintaining practices that curb greenhouse gas emissions, including no till, minimum till, prescribed grazing or cover crops. The three-year project is funded through a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant through the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities that will pay out $57 million in 2024 and 2025 to roughly 4,000 producers in Arkansas, Minnesota, North Dakota and Virginia. [link]
The UK's Food and Drink Federation (FDF) has set out its green policy priorities for the next Government, calling on all parties to make bolder pledges on the energy transition and regenerative agriculture. These include expanding grants and other incentives for food and drink manufacturers seeking to install innovative green energy technologies and energy efficiency technologies, beyond the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund that is allocated on a competitive basis. The FDF is also imploring Ministers to facilitate the creation of a new ‘Sustainable Food Pact’. It describes the Pact as a “pre-competitive industry collaboration to restore and maintain the natural systems needed for agricultural productivity”. [link]
General Mills and Unilever recently made significant investments in a University of Maryland-led initiative to evaluate the adoption and efficacy of climate-smart farming practices. The Harvest Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, or Harvest SARA, uses satellite measurements to shed light on the suitability of certain land management techniques for producing robust yields that are gentle on the ground from which they came. Unilever and General Mills’ gifts to the Harvest SARA Initiative Fund will be used to build a robust and actionable evidence base for various management practices, and provide science-based, good practices for quantifying environmental, economic and social outcomes associated with their adoption. [link]
Iowa State University is helping to lead a five-year, $16 million project to explore some big, interconnected questions impacting agriculture in the Corn Belt and Great Plains. The project will seek to understand how combinations of crops (corn, soybean, wheat, rye), agronomic management (tillage, fertilizer), diverse soils and water (rainfed, irrigated, subsurface drainage) affect productivity and environmental performance of cropping systems. The expansive study will collect new data from experimental field sites in seven states (Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska and Ohio) and use simulation modeling to expand the knowledge gained across time and space. [link]
The Missouri Organic Association (MOA) will recruit a total of 80 farms to participate in a project that will test the effects of biochar usage in agriculture. The carbon- and nutrient-dense substance, made from biomass like wood chips or animal manure, is the star player in a new project that MOA is pioneering through the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program. Biochar traps microorganisms that can sequester carbon emissions in the soil for long periods of time, lessening farmers’ environmental impact. It can also help farmers by holding things like fertilizer in the soil. [link]
The 2022 U.S. Census of Agriculture was released this week, reporting increased farm profits but decreased farmland in what Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called “a wakeup call.” The U.S. is now home to about 880 million acres of farmland, down from 900 million at the time of the last census in 2017. Number of farms also declined relative to 2017, down 142,000 to 1.9 million. The last time the country saw numbers this small was 1850. Average farm income has risen, weighing in at $79,790 as of 2022. Growers have continued to adopt technologies and practices that reduce their environmental footprint. No-till has increased to 38% of acres in 2022 compared to 35% in 2012, while cover cropping amounted to 18 million acres in 2022, up 17% compared to 2017 and 75% compared to 2012. From 2017 to 2022, the number of acres of cropland that were fertilized (excluding pasture) fell by 5%. Acres treated to control insects fell by 26% while acres treated to control weeds, grass, or brush fell by 10%. [link][link]
A series of workshops focused on regenerative ranching and adaptive grazing will be held in Texas and surrounding states this year. The courses are offered by the Noble Research Institute, the nation’s largest independent agricultural organization with a commitment to assisting farmers and ranchers in exploring and implementing regenerative management practices. The Noble Land Essentials course teaches farmers and ranchers how to grow more nutritious forage from fertile soils, build drought resilience while mitigating flood risk and boost ranch productivity with long term profitability. The Noble Grazing Essentials course helps farmers and ranchers by equipping them with skills to identify variables and resources to consider in grazing plans. Participants will also learn how to determine the limiting factors of current grazing practices, develop a strategy to address forage production issues and establish goals for enhanced resilience and grazing production. [link]
In Case You Missed It…
In late January, Kroger announced that it had set a new supplier goal that requires all of its fresh produce suppliers to use Integrated Pest Management practices for all products supplied to the grocery company by 2030. Read more, here.