July 6, 2024
Spotlight Stories
Spotlight 1 – Agri Investor writes that discontent among farmers continues to grow. Check out the story, here.
Spotlight 2 – AgWeb offers a crop insurance provider’s advice for adding sustainable practices on-farm. Check it out, here.
Spotlight 3 – Flatland KC says that with conservation action lagging, so does progress in slashing the Gulf’s “dead zone.” Read the article, here.
Industry Updates
FoodDrinkEurope has unveiled its Food Investment and Resilience Plan, aimed at bolstering the competitiveness and sustainability of the European food and drink industry comprising 291,000 companies with a collective turnover of €1.1 trillion. The plan calls for a more targeted Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and the development of a comprehensive food investment strategy, which includes securing at least €30 billion in the first year for sustainable agriculture, along with €7 billion for plastic recycling targets and €5.5 billion for the current loan gap in the agri-food space. The plan also calls for the simplification of regulations, the creation of a food policy coordination unit, the removal of trade barriers and enhanced international cooperation, and faster procedures for the risk assessment and approval of sustainable food solutions. [link]
Potato breeder, Tuberosum Technologies, has announced the successful registration of four True Potato Seed (TPS) varieties, marking the first time TPS varieties have been officially registered in Canada, heralding a new era of innovation and sustainability in potato farming. The newly registered tetraploid TPS varieties are the first step in enhancing the global potato industry, offering producers a more efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly method of cultivation. Unlike traditional tuber-based potato propagation, True Potato Seeds offer numerous advantages including improved disease resilience, easier storage, reduced transportation/phytosanitary constraints, and a more flexible supply chain. [link]
New figures from Zero Carbon Forum and Wildfarmed say that 3.6 million tonnes of carbon could be saved by 2030 if every operator across the UK hospitality and brewing sector switched to regenerative flour and barley. Roughly 35% of the UK's emissions come from the food and drink sector, with Zero Carbon Forum's benchmark data finding that flour and barley production is responsible for 2.5% of the hospitality and brewing sector's emissions. The news comes at a time when extreme weather and record-breaking rain are putting our food systems at risk, with crops underwater, depleted harvests and higher costs for farmers, operators and consumers. [link]
The Cooperative Research Centre for High Performance Soils (Soil CRC) in Australia is investing a further $4.1 million in new research with another eight projects over the next three years, aiming to increase growers' knowledge of soil issues and investigate new options to improve soil conditions. The latest investment brings the total cash spending on projects to more than $40 million since the CRC commenced in 2017. Soil CRC chief executive officer Michael Crawford said these projects build on previous Soil CRC research into soil data and performance metrics, novel products and technology to increase soil function, and farmer engagement and adoption. [link]
The Kansas Association of Conservation Districts (KACD) is partnering again with Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM), to offer their program to reward producers across Kansas for planting cover crops and implementing other regenerative practices. Cover crop payments range from $10 - $25 per acre depending on when the acres were first planted to a cover crop. This is the third year this program has been offered across the state. In 2023 Kansas farmers and ranchers planted and enrolled 189,000 acres of cover crops as well as other practice activities for producers that had wheat in their rotation. The 2024 program is very similar to what was offered in 2023 through ADM. [link]
Amazon will devise a new standard for verifying the quality of carbon offsets that it needs in order to hit its net-zero targets, with the new standard covering reforestation and agroforestry, according to Reuters. Amazon has quit carbon offset standards that its founder Jeff Bezos helped to fund, opting instead for a new standard. The company is now working on Abacus, which would be an alternative to the standards developed by another organization that Amazon has been funding: the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market. [link]
A new publication from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) sets out how coffee produced through agroforestry can improve resilience and ensure livelihoods in the face of climate change. The publication explains how agroforestry practices – essentially farming with trees - can be used as a climate risk reduction strategy that preserves ecosystems, improves production, generates higher incomes, enhances ecosystem sustainability and fosters resilient livelihoods. It presents a pilot project to promote coffee produced through agroforestry among producers in Malawi and Uganda, designed and implemented by FAO and the Slow Food Coffee Coalition, an international network that promotes sustainable coffee value chains, with funding from the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and supported by the Mountain Partnership Secretariat. [link]
RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau has shown for the first time, in a joint study with BOKU University, that permaculture brings about a significant improvement in biodiversity, soil quality and carbon storage, based on studies in Germany and Luxembourg. Permaculture uses natural cycles and ecosystems as a blueprint. Food is produced in an agricultural ecosystem that is as self-regulating, natural and diverse as possible. The study, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, comprehensively investigated the effects of this planning and management concept on the environment, finding three times the number of plant species on permaculture areas relative to conventional sites. [link]
A new research project led by the University of Copenhagen will receive around €78 million over a period of seven years and focus on the development of climate-resilient crops. The program leverages environmental DNA (eDNA) to pioneer sustainable agriculture. It seeks to decode how ecosystems and crops responded and adapted to past environmental changes, aiming to enhance crop resilience and agroecosystem sustainability for a more sustainable future. [link]
A new $1.5 million program in New Brunswick, Canada aims to offset the cost of feasibility studies for agriculture-focused anaerobic digester development within the farm sector and reduce greenhouse gases while fostering farm sustainability. The sequence of anaerobic digestion involves breaking down biodegradable materials by bacteria without oxygen. Agriculture Minister, Margaret Johnson, said that anaerobic digesters provide an innovative way to reduce waste and generate energy. The Anaerobic Digester Feasibility Studies Funding Program will help farmers plan how they can use this important technology. [link]
In Case You Missed It…
In early June, Heineken announced that it had received its first harvest of barley produced on land where regenerative agriculture practices have been adopted at scale. See more, here.