Farmers and ranchers play a integral role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, thus reducing our carbon footprint.
One company, dedicated to “farmer profitability, environmental sustainability, and consumer health” plans to incentivize producers for implementing regenerative practices.
Indigo Ag emerged with the goal of “harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet.” Kari Hernandez, global head of carbon operations at Indigo Ag, speaks to one way the company is helping farmers with sustainability.
“Indigo Carbon is a program that lets growers, who are interested in generating carbon credits, get paid for those carbon credits by selling them to big corporate buyers,” Hernandez says. “And by generating those carbon credits, they’re improving the health of their soil. The way you generate carbon credits is by adding carbon farming practices, or regenerative practice, which help restore microbial activity, improve water retention, and generally increase the health of that soil.”
Hernandez says, Indigo Carbon is flexible, in letting growers “chart their own course.” Farmers must “adopt or advance at least one new carbon farming practice,” however, the amount of acres is solely dependent on his or her level of comfort.
“We believe the decisions you make, on your farm, should be rooted in the agronomic realities and challenges you have,” Hernandez says. “We encourage growers to think about – What are some things plaguing you today? Is it weed control in this field? Soil erosion in another field? How can you change the course of these? We try to anchor on the problem we need to solve and the options to do it. And if we can generate carbon credits along the way, that’s a great bonus.”
Indigo Ag will calculate a producer’s carbon credits at the end of the growing season, and then sell them to big companies, such as IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Shopify, and Dogfish Head Brewery.
“We’ve seen a lot of movement over the past couple of years, especially toward a need for companies to meet climate neutrality,” Hernandez says. “We’ve seen a large portion of Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies come out and say, ‘We will be climate neutral or climate negative by 2030.”
“And there’s quite a long list of companies that are in line to buy your carbon credits from Indigo Ag. The reason they’re coming to Indigo Ag is we’re creating carbon credits that are incredibly high integrity and value,” Hernandez says.
Indigo Ag has seen “a lot of momentum” on this front, and looks forward to issuing its first round of carbon credits in 2021. For more information on Indigo Carbon, visit indigoag.com/carbon.
