April 13, 2024
Spotlight Stories
Spotlight 1 – Loop News writes about how Indian farmers are embracing natural farming to fight climate change effects. Check out the story, here.
Spotlight 2 – McKinsey highlights results from a recent farm survey with some interesting takeaways for regenerative agriculture. Check it out, here.
Industry Updates
The County of Kaua‘i’s Office of Economic Development in Hawaii has announced the recipients of its Agriculture Farm Expansion Grants (AFEG) for Fiscal Year 2023-2024. This is the first year that the county offered funding for AFEG with the intent to advance Kaua‘i’s agricultural industry through targeted investments in the expansion of farming across the island. A selection committee reviewed and scored all the eligible projects and funded (partially or fully) nine proposals for a total of $429,843. The list of projects includes expanding local organic crops, composting, agroforestry nursery operations, farm equipment, and more. [link]
Southern blight is a deadly soilborne diseases that infects more than 500 plant species worldwide, including in the southern United States. It is increasingly creeping northward and starting to affect apple production in Pennsylvania. The causal organism, Sclerotium (Athelia) rolfsiii, is a fungus that affects the lower part of the tree, killing roots and girdling trees. It most commonly affects young apple trees less than three years old. Chances are that the disease has been present in Pennsylvania soils for a while, however climactic conditions have not been favorable for the fungus until recently. [link]
More than $1.1 million has been awarded to eight organizations to implement key environmental education initiatives in their local communities, under the New South Wales (NSW), Australia Environmental Trust's Environmental Education Grants Program. The Environmental Education program supports projects that help communities to learn, acquire new skills, and be inspired to act in ways that are good for the environment. Examples of projects funded under the Environmental Research Grants Program include money for rebuilding communities and biodiversity after flooding events, helping school communities address climate change by creating an environmental education directory, and collaboration with farmers and landowners to address land degradation and the promotion of regenerative agricultural practices. [link]
New York-based controlled environment agriculture company, Square Roots, has unveiled a program that aims to remove lighting from commercial indoor vertical farming systems to reduce energy demands and costs. Through partnerships and focused research, the company says it is exploring techniques like heterotrophic growing to operate indoor farms in the dark, with the goal of lower production costs and environmental impact while maintaining year-round fresh food production. The program seeks to demonstrate that light can be removed from a commercial indoor vertical farming system; the benefits of indoor farming remain, but the system can now operate with radically reduced energy needs. This translates directly to significantly lower production costs and associated carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e. [link]
Applegate, a leading natural and organic meat brand, has announced a new partnership with American Farmland Trust in the form of a $50,000 donation to the Brighter Future Fund, a program that helps farmers and ranchers nationwide improve the protection of their farmland together with the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices. Applegate's donation will fund grants, valued up to $5,000, for livestock farmers or ranchers who are working to become more resilient and viable. [link]
The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) announced that it has decided to allow the use of environmental attribute certificates like carbon offsets for abatement purposes on the Scope 3 emissions of corporations, reversing a long-standing position against their usage. SBTi considers this step a way to accelerate the decarbonization of value chains with compensation logic while companies make their way to eliminate carbon emissions at the root through innovation and technology improvements. As part of the Standard revision process, a first draft of basic rules, thresholds, and guardrails for the potential use of environmental attribute certificates for abatement purposes of Scope 3 emissions will be issued by SBTi by July 2024. [link]
The UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Land Conservation Organization (OCT) unveiled the new CompensaAÇÃO (CompensACTION) project: Promotion of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) for deforestation-free supply chains in Brazil. CompensAÇÃO will be a joint investment of US$4.9 million by IFAD and the Republic of Germany and will be implemented in the Atlantic Forest biome, one of the areas most threatened by deforestation in the world. The main objective of CompensAÇÃO is to create the conditions for promoting agroforestry transition in cocoa production areas. Payment to producers for ecosystem services will take the form of materials for reforestation and cash compensation. [link]
Food security and biodiversity are both helped by diversified farming techniques, with little negative impact, according to a new paper that includes research from two Washington State University professors. In one study across 30 different locations in four states, researchers found that the more complex and diverse a farm, the wider the diversity of wild birds it supported, and that the birds were a net positive for the farms. Another study reviewed trees on farms showing that food security was enhanced due to trees providing food and income sources for farmers themselves, while maintaining yields of legacy crops in the production system. [link]
Kirin Holdings and its subsidiary, Kirin Beverage, have entered a partnership with the Rainforest Alliance on a project to develop and pilot a regenerative agriculture tea framework, “The Regenerative Tea Scorecard.” The Regenerative Tea Scorecard is based on the Rainforest Alliance’s definition of regenerative agriculture, which takes a conservation and restoration approach to farming by combining environmentally friendly farming practices with integrated systems management strategies to ensure soil health, on-farm biodiversity conservation, ecosystem restoration, and improved farmer livelihoods. The Scorecard is intended to be a tool that farmers and companies can use voluntarily and easily to support tea farms in their transition to regenerative farming. The project will begin in some tea plantations in Sri Lanka, the main producer of the tea leaves used in Kirin Gogo-no-Kocha, and a pilot test is scheduled for 2024. [link]
Hoping to cash in on $4.6 billion in federal grants from the Inflation Reduction Act, the state of Nebraska has put together its first ever Priority Climate Action Plan. Agriculture is a major focus in the plan. Although agriculture contributes to 10% of emissions nationwide, it is a larger part of the economy in Nebraska and therefore a bigger part of the greenhouse gas emissions at 42% of the total in 2021, according to the plan. The climate action plan sets the goal of reducing the amount of carbon Nebraska emits to the atmosphere by 25.7 million metric tons by 2030, with 86% of the cut coming from agriculture. To get to that goal, encouraging farmers to use more regenerative practices and precision equipment is one focus. The plan proposes to create a carbon intensity score registry that would help measure the impact those farming practices are having. [link]
Retail co-op PCC Community Markets recently hosted PCC’s Convening on Regenerative and Organic Food Systems, wherein the retailer worked with roughly 85 food system leaders representing 55 organizations to consider the next steps for regenerative agriculture. The event addressed issues facing growers, producers, and retail outlets that distribute regeneratively-grown crops. PCC said that regenerative agriculture is inconsistently defined and as a result, it and other retailers have seen a spike in unverifiable claims that products are regenerative or produced via regenerative agricultural practices. The lack of industrywide standards means an increasing risk that unverified claims will undermine the integrity of organics or lead to greenwashed marketing and misled consumers, said PCC. [link]
Woolworths grocery chain in New Zealand said that its suppliers are increasingly using drones amid a push for regenerative agriculture and water conservation. Specifically, the group’s suppliers are using drone technology to identify plants under stress, allowing farmers to make data-driven decisions and conserve water resources. Farmers can monitor the health of crops and detect signs of strain by utilizing drones with advanced sensors, allowing for targeted irrigation and resource management. [link]
In Case You Missed It…
In late March, a group of U.S. Senators introduced the EMIT LESS Act to reduce methane emissions from livestock. See more, here.