The BIG problem
Food and agriculture contribute 31% of global GHG emissions. However, through the adoption of regenerative farming, the land can serve as a carbon sink. But farmers can’t bear this burden alone; to activate this solution, we must support and reward producers who adopt regenerative practices. Food companies want to invest in programs to incentivize their ingredient suppliers – which would help reduce their scope 3 value chain emissions – but need verifiable data to inform their decisions. Primary barrier until now: traditional methods of measuring on-farm emissions and carbon sequestration, and verifying the adoption of regenerative practices, are complicated, non-scalable, and cost-prohibitive.
Regrow’s BOLD solution: Sustainability Insights
Sustainability Insights (SI) provides the foundational measurement and monitoring data that companies need in order to manage and reduce on-farm emissions by working with producers to scale the adoption of regenerative practices. The SI platform uses industry-exclusive technologies backed by NASA and the USDA (DNDC and OpTIS) to aggregate field-level farm data across ingredient/crop supply sheds and sourcing regions. This precise and dynamic data enables companies to baseline, monitor and report critical metrics, including emissions factors, with credibility and confidence. It also enables robust data collection at large scale, allowing organizations to affordably monitor emissions across global supply sheds.
Sustainability Insights is the only specialized software solution for Scope 3 agricultural land use emissions. Capabilities fall into two primary categories: 1) emissions inventory and management, 2) scenario modeling and analysis. The platform enables organizations to both capture historical emissions and land management data, and quantify future potential to reduce emissions or sequester carbon through regenerative agriculture practices. It generates data that’s specific to an organization’s value chain and sourcing regions, making it more accurate and comprehensive than what generalized carbon accounting platforms or LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) databases can provide. This will lead to broader adoption and better outcomes.
Powered by industry-leading science and technology
Sustainability Insights demonstrates excellence in the unique combination of science and digital technologies underpinning our solution. SI provides dynamic data through our soil carbon model, DNDC, and location-specific calculations through OpTIS remote-sensing technology. DNDC (DeNitrification DeComposition) itself is unique in being the only scientific soil carbon model applied, calibrated, and validated globally.
Regrow’s model for quantifying soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions, which forms the basis of the Sustainability Insights product, was granted the first generalized approval by the Climate Action Reserve (CAR) under their Soil Enrichment Protocol (SEP). CAR is the most trusted, efficient and experienced offset registry for global carbon markets. Companies looking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through agriculture are now able to build programs with greater alignment to national standards by relying on Regrow’s model validation.
SI’s environmental and economic impact…so far
Regrow is using the science and technology that fuels our products to make regenerative agriculture accessible on a global scale. We do this by enabling our customers – including Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, and General Mills – to measure, monitor, and reduce Scope 3 emissions associated with their agricultural supply chains. We currently monitor more than 400M acres of land across the globe, and we’ve already helped sequester more than 50,000 metric tonnes of carbon.
While Regrow is growing quickly, we are still a young company with many customers in the early stages of projects that will sequester hundreds of thousands of metric tonnes of carbon EACH over the next 3 years (aiming for >1 million!), in addition to reducing nitrogen and methane emissions. We will increase the scope of our technology and will expand the SI platform to new crops, dairy and livestock supply chains within the coming year. Ultimately, Regrow’s vision is to generate impact that goes far beyond the numbers we will be able to directly connect to our own customers’ projects.
Building a resilient food production system through scalable regenerative agriculture will bring added economic benefits to farmers which will reduce inequalities and stabilize at-risk communities. While we don’t yet have exact data, many farmers’ incomes will be supplemented by customer programs that are currently in early or development stages. For example, Regrow is the technology partner for Kellogg’s InGrained™, a five-year partnership with Lower Mississippi River Basin rice farmers to help reduce their climate impact. Kellogg’s pays farmers for their methane reductions, which Regrow enables them to accurately quantify and verify. During the pilot year of the program, InGrained helped farmers implement climate-smart irrigation practices that achieved a reduction of more than 1,600 metric tons of greenhouse gasses – the equivalent of taking more than 345 gasoline-powered cars off the road for one year.
Not only will thousands more farmers earn supplemental income for ecosystem services, adopting regenerative practices helps them reduce costs and stabilize yields, adding to their bottom line. In a 2021 economic study of 100 US farms, Soil Health Institute found that soil health management systems increased net farm income by an average $45/acre for soybean. If Regrow supports regenerative projects on 1M ha (2.47M acres) over 3 years, that’s $111M into the economy. When you add carbon payments at $20/ton * 0.5 ton/ac, our potential impact increases to $136M.
