June 15, 2024

Spotlight Stories

Spotlight 1 – Reuters writes that rewarding farmers for regenerative agriculture is critical for decarbonizing the food sector. Check out the story, here.

Spotlight 2 – AgFunder discusses learnings from Bayer and Perdue after a three-year regenerative agriculture partnership. Check it out, here.

Spotlight 3 – The University of Vermont says that modern seeds aren’t ready for climate change. Read the article, here.

Industry Updates

The University of Sydney is leading a three-year research study with eight farms across NSW and Queensland in Australia to examine how soil health on cotton farms can be improved by using cover crops. Conservationists continue to warn of the environmental harm caused by the cotton industry, and cotton growers know that they need to shake this image and continue to become more sustainable. The hope is that the new study can produce information that helps growers understand how they can boost their soil health depending on their specific location. [link]

A Kauai nonprofit in Hawaii is trumpeting tropical agroforestry as a way to solve food insecurity. The largest breadfruit agroforest in the state is run by The Breadfruit Institute at The National Tropical Botanical Garden, with researchers calling it a game changer. The Breadfruit Institute has incorporated over 150 different plants on its multi-dimensional farm, donating 30 tons of food to the Kauai Independent Food Bank in the last five years. Hawaii imports 85%-90% of its food, making the state vulnerable to economic and environmental catastrophes that could affect shipping into the islands. [link]

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) released a report entitled, Land Squeeze, finding that land ownership is being consolidated in the hands of a few powerful actors, squeezing out smaller farmers, pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples, and others who rely on traditional farmland. Since 2000, land around twice the size of Germany has been snatched up globally in transnational deals, according to IPES-Food’s report. Approximately 87 percent of these land grabs occurred in regions of high biodiversity. The top 1 percent of world’s largest farms now control 70 percent of land, leaving smaller-scale farmers behind. [link]

Chivas Brothers, the Pernod Ricard business dedicated to Scotch whisky and makers of Chivas Regal and Aberlour, announced a new agriculture program supporting sustainable farming practices among Scottish barley growers represented by Bairds Malt and Scotgrain. The partnership will work collaboratively to facilitate and further continuous improvement on-farm, while helping to future-proof the livelihoods of farmers in regional Scottish communities. It also intends to secure a proper supply of barley while reducing carbon emissions in the supply chain. [link]

Pennsylvania Governor, Josh Shapiro, visited a local farm in Lancaster County and announced a $10.3 million state agriculture innovation program designed to support and attract new agriculture businesses that focus on innovation and sustainability. The Agriculture Innovation and Conservation program would provide grants to farmers and other businesses to help them implement new technologies and practices that are designed to improve soil health, reduce runoff and erosion, and increase energy efficiency. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) will deliver grants to farmers and other businesses interested in participating in the program. [link]

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) is now accepting applications for a grant to develop enterprises, supply chains, and markets for continuous living cover crops and cropping systems in the early stage of commercial development. This is the third request for proposals under one-time funding provided to the MDA from the General Fund and the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. The goal is to provide grants to CLC crops and cropping systems value chain enterprises for equipment infrastructure and business and market development. The minimum award is $10,000 and the maximum award is $45,000. [link]

The Canadian Senate Committee on Agriculture has released a new study on Soil Health in Canada, evaluating the current status of soils inside the country and putting forward 25 recommendations for improving and maintaining those soils. The study, "Critical Ground: Why Soil is Essential to Canada's Economic, Environmental, Human and Social Health" advocates for the Federal Government to recognize a sense of urgency and act accordingly to protect and conserve Canada's soils. The study also recommends that the Federal Government designate soil as a strategic national resource or asset, that they appoint a national soils advocate, and that the Government of Canada support the development of a long-term overarching strategy to protect and conserve soil throughout Canada, including targets, timetables, and provisions for review. [link]

Pollination and Transformational Investing in Food Systems (TIFS), with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, today released a foundational guide for mobilizing and scaling capital for the regenerative transition. Canvassing the market of available resources for financing regenerative agriculture solutions, Financing Regenerative Agriculture offers insights from key market participants and provides interested stakeholders with a broad catalogue of the innovative regenerative financing instruments currently being deployed globally. With a $250,000 grant from The Rockefeller Foundation, Pollination partnered with TIFS to synthesize learnings and insights gained from over 40 primary interviews with practitioners in the field. The report expands awareness of structures that have the potential to scale capital deployment, positively impact millions of producers, regenerate millions of hectares of land, and mobilize sizeable investment flows in both developed and emerging markets. [link]

Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member John Boozman, R- Ark., released his framework for a Senate farm bill this week. His plan is similar to legislation passed by the House Agriculture Committee last month. One focal point includes changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, including a formula that would determine the amount of assistance that recipients receive, in an effort to make the program cost-neutral. The Senate farm bill proposal includes an average 15% reference price increase for all covered commodities. It also doubles funding for trade programs and includes additional funding for small business development, rural broadband and rural infrastructure programs. Finally, Boozman’s framework would shift funds from the Inflation Reduction Act into the farm bill’s conservation title. Republicans have long contended this will allow them to not only increase farm bill conservation spending, but also make it a permanent part of the farm bill. Democrats have been against this because it means a sizable percentage of IRA funding won’t necessarily be used to offset greenhouse gas emissions as originally intended. [link]

BeZero Carbon has delivered the first ever regenerative agriculture sub-sector rating for a project's ability to remove an equivalent amount of carbon from the atmosphere. The project, based in North America, has been assigned a BBB rating, indicating that it has a moderate likelihood of achieving a ton of CO2e removed or avoided. This is a significant advancement in the evaluation of soil-related agricultural practices within the carbon market. [link]

Canopy Farm Management announced the launch of Canopy Compass, a web-based, crop suitability mapping and farm analysis tool built to support farmers' transition to regenerative agriculture, identifying perennial crop possibilities across U.S. farmland. Developed in partnership with the Savanna Institute, a nonprofit agroforestry research organization, the Canopy Compass tool harnesses the most comprehensive and scientifically robust crop suitability maps available today. More than 90 maps from over a dozen sources are completely free to explore on the site. [link]

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) announced $10.2 million in new grants to help agricultural producers implement voluntary conservation practices on farms and ranches across 14 states. The grants will leverage more than $4.9 million in matching contributions for a total conservation impact of $15.1 million. The grants were awarded through the Conservation Partners Program, a partnership between NFWF, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Cargill, The J.M. Smucker Co., Nestlé, and additional support from a collaboration among General Mills, Walmart and Sam’s Club. The program awards competitive grants to accelerate the adoption of voluntary conservation practices and regenerative agriculture principles on private working lands and to support enrollment in Farm Bill conservation programs. [link]

A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Cornell University looks at how organic farmers' beliefs about the microbiome influence their soil management practices. The researchers surveyed 85 organic vegetable farmers in New York, gauging their microbiome beliefs, farming practices, and motivations. The farmers were also asked to provide soil samples from their fields. Overall, 96% of the farmers believed that the microbiome on their farm is influencing plant defenses and pest suppression. But there was much more variety in their beliefs about what factors promote a healthy microbiome. Broadly, researchers found that farmers who believed on-farm practices such as no-till or cover crops are important for influencing the microbiome also tended to adopt those practices. [link]

A new Farm Journal poll conducted on behalf of Invest in Our Land in 10 agricultural states shows U.S. farmers and ranchers believe conservation funding has an important role to play in building their operations’ resilience to increasingly extreme weather and addressing the effects of climate change. The poll — which surveyed 1,019 farmers, ranchers and producers across Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, South Dakota, Michigan, Montana and Wisconsin — also revealed that, by a double-digit margin, farmers and ranchers want Congress to protect $20 billion in conservation funding originally authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act and ensure those funds remain dedicated to climate-smart practices in the upcoming farm bill. [link]

ADM and Bayer are extending their collaboration to increase the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices among farmers in Europe in a bid to reduce carbon emissions and improve biodiversity and soil health. The partnership will expand beyond an initial 2023 oilseed assessment in Poland to include a wider range of crops, including corn, wheat and barley and geographically across Eastern Europe. The companies will provide farmers with financial and technical services to implement qualifying regenerative agriculture practices. These include minimum tillage, cover crops, companion crops, nutrient management, organic matter/manure use and crop rotation. [link]

In Case You Missed It…

In late May, research published in the journal, Nature, said that extensive lab and field trials showed that naturally derived bacteria can reduce nitrous oxide emitted off farms into the atmosphere without disrupting other microbes in the soil. See more, here.