Industry’s First Digital Carbon Footprint Measurement Program for Agriculture Announced

Bayer, Amazon Web Services and Fargo-based Bushel are working together to help farmers capture value from the carbon market. While there has been a focus on climate solutions, the ability to have metrics that trace back to the farm have been a hurdle. Bushel CEO Jake Joraanstad says Project Carbonview now digitizes this process. “Now, all we have to do is show the field where they did that work and the output of that grain is delivered to the facility; we’re basically tying a scale ticket to a field record.” Initially, this effort will help ethanol producers track carbon emissions from planting through production. This initiative may expand to soybean crush plants, grain milling operations and similar businesses in the future. “These plants spend millions of dollars per year to get a small, small quarter-of-a-percent efficiency gains that they can take to California Carbon and say here’s what we’ve done, but it’s all in the processing side. Nobody has looked hard at tracking inbound grain and if the farmer is doing a great job and there should be benefits if they are.” Eligible farmers who enroll in the pilot project will be paid for their participation. Ultimately, the goal is to incentivize the adoption of climate-friendly practices, such as low-till or no-till farming, creating new revenue streams through the emerging climate market.