To comply with the Paris Agreement, the carbon intensity of agricultural production must be reduced by around 3% per year until 2030. This is the first step towards achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. However, emissions from the agricultural sector fell by only 12% between 1990 and 2022.
A challenge of massification
For about ten years, pioneering food industry players have been creating and funding agro-ecological pilot farms, such as Nestlé's net-zero farm in South Africa. Pilot experiments, which are valuable examples, but their scale-up is still too slow.
And a large food company transforms the equivalent of the production of hundreds of farmers, not even to mention the big groups. It is therefore urgent to think massification to remain on the Paris Agreement's climate trajectory.
Reward the outcome rather than the method
Scaling up the agricultural transition means a significant mobilisation of resources, with a resulting creation of value for those who will finance it. However, the food industry currently finances, for the most part, the implementation of practices on farms, in other words, resources.
Wouldn't it be more impactful to communicate results achieved by farmers, backed by concrete evidence? The stated reduction in carbon footprint is a good example, already tested by several food brands in the United Kingdom or the United States.
It may therefore be necessary to change paradigm and create the model for industrialists to valorise the results. quantitative resulting from their funding.
In other words, to shift to support calculated on the results achieved and no longer solely on the practices and means implemented.
Co-benefits for all
Reducing the emission factor of agricultural production represents the best source of “monetisation” for the transition. Indeed, its measurement is key for the food industry, which will agree, in return for this decrease, to participate actively in its financing.
Beyond the interest of the sectors, the measurement of “carbon” must be more broadly considered as a key indicator of other soil regeneration measures. And this for the primary benefit of farmers.
Indeed, a higher amount of organic matter in soils, synonymous with carbon, is a favourable condition for the development of microbial life (bacteria.
All these organisms are key to restoring soil fertility and therefore ensuring future yields capable of securing the resilience of farms.
Moreover, by combining an increase in organic matter with simplified soil work (SSW), erosion can be contained, biodiversity in fields maintained, and soil moisture conserved. These various benefits contribute, beyond farmers' resilience, to the balance of territories and food sovereignty, which has once again become a key issue.
This is why at Carbone Farmers, We are focusing our efforts on carbon measurement.. Carbon is a key indicator, the one that drives all the others.
A financial balance that still needs to be found
While quantifying emission reductions and measuring co-benefits undoubtedly create value, their financing through downstream sectors remains tricky.
The inflationary context we've witnessed since the end of Covid, exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, makes any further price increases complex, even for recognised causes such as ecological transition. These entirely legitimate brakes prevent manufacturers and distributors from embracing the subject and making it a point of differentiation. Therefore, only the pooling of approaches and co-financing by stakeholders in the sectors can make financing the transition acceptable and bearable.
The model proposed by Carbone Farmers integrates these constraints. We define a distribution of financing by incorporating buyers of carbon credits, located outside the value chain.
To go further: What is the point of calculating the cost of the transition?
