Click here to read the original article, published in Agri Business Review.
In the last five years, the rise in adoption of science-based targets in the private sector has driven multinational organizations to converge around one key sustainability metric: carbon emissions. With nearly half of S&P companies committed to science-based targets, it’s safe to say that there’s a common language that can be used when discussing corporate sustainability initiatives.
Don’t get me wrong; I think there are a lot of positives to the fact that organizations have rallied around the singular metric of carbon. As a sustainability professional, the idea of a simplified message has allowed for streamlined executive-level conversations, and therefore clearer and faster decision-making. However, there are other metrics, like water quantity, water quality, and biodiversity, that have a local impact and deserve to be part of the conversation. It is much harder to explain these metrics at a company-wide or global scale because they impact each region so differently. One part of the country may have issues with drought, while another has issues with flooding, making the conversation about water quantity so nuanced and complex that it can be hard to create a cohesive company strategy.
In the agriculture space, carbon works well as the central and main metric, because the practices that drive carbon reduction also impact other metrics positively. This positions carbon emissions as an appropriate primary decision-making metric—it just shouldn’t be the only metric in the project scope. Out in the field, carbon isn’t a metric that resonates with farmers. They don’t see the impact of carbon emissions when measuring their farm’s profitability or yield, but if you discussed drought with a farmer in California or water quality with a farmer in Iowa or Nebraska, they’d immediately have an answer as to how it has impacted their daily operations.
With each carbon-driven regenerative agriculture project, there should be a mini-materiality assessment to understand other environmental metrics that are relevant to the region or the farmers in scope. These material issues can be quantified and progress against them can be measured to help describe the success of the investment.
While we have been so focused on carbon emissions as the main success metric of regenerative agriculture, we seem to have forgotten one of the main reasons companies have a climate-related sustainability strategies: to reduce risk to the organization. Tracking material progress against all relevant environmental metrics can help to quantify the decrease in supply chain risk to an organization. Environmental costs are often externalized. But if we can identify key metrics in need of improvement at the local level, we can explain how we are tangibly impacting externalities that typically pose risk to an agribusiness’ supply chain. For example, planting cover crops, which can significantly reduce carbon emissions, can have other field-level impacts, such as improved water infiltration and therefore less water runoff, increased soil health, higher crop yield, and enhanced local biodiversity. This could mean there is less need for on-farm irrigation or municipal-level groundwater treatment.
With a significant de-emphasis on petroleum-based products, the demand for innovative plant-based solutions is rising. To meet this demand, companies should continue to invest in their agricultural supply chains to drive climate-related resilience. Implementing regenerative practices not only reduces carbon and other environmental risks, but it is also shown to reduce the need for farm inputs, improve farmer profitability, and increase crop yield over time, which can help grow the industry as a whole and drive value for each member of the agricultural value chain.
At Primient, we’re partnering with Terion to ensure our regenerative agriculture programs are measuring more than “just” carbon. Our program helps us and our customers to understand both economic and environmental insights like average yield, water and wind erosion risk, nitrogen use efficiency, soil health, and pest management practices. Primient is committed continuing to build programs around the risks that are most relevant to farmers in our supply shed with the goal of reducing risk and building resilience in our shared value chain.