Subscribe to our newsletter
Today Cargill RegenConnect™is one of the most well-recognized farmer-first regenerative agriculture programs.
Building resilient food supply chains — those that are less impactful on our climate and less impacted by the effects of climate change — is critical for the future of our planet. Resilient supply chains allow us to build water quality, enhance biodiversity and reduce the emissions associated with food production, all while assuring food security for companies.
Global food corporation Cargill knows firsthand that, in order to change our food systems, we must support growers in the transition to more resilient farming practices and establish a strong business case for investment in agriculture resilience.
Challenge
In 2020, Cargill set out to build a program that:
- Empowered growers to adopt regenerative farming practices
- Provided growers access to carbon markets
- Accelerated progress toward corporate and partner-based climate goals.
Cargill needed the program to be accessible for growers, scalable across global supply chains and backed by trusted science and technology. A successful program would deliver grower support in transitioning to climate-smart farming practices, along with scientifically robust carbon outcomes for Cargill to activate in the marketplace.
Partnership
A design partnership between Cargill and Regrow set the foundation for a program that would support growers as they implement regenerative agriculture practices and leverage Regrow’s measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) platform to quantify the carbon outcomes associated with practice changes.
The program would allow growers to enroll via an online platform, identify regenerative agriculture practices to implement based on their unique farm history, and estimate the potential outcome of those practices in tCO2e. The program would then allow Cargill to monitor the implementation of regenerative practices and confirm the outcome of those practices using Regrow’s MRV technology. All of this in compliance with leading industry regulations and in a way that could be scaled globally across crops and regions.
Solution
Together Cargill and Regrow developed Cargill RegenConnect™, one of the most scalable and well-recognized regenerative agriculture programs on the market.
The best-in-class program connects farmers to the growing carbon marketplace and allows more farmers to be paid for the carbon they sequester, which leads to widespread emissions reductions. Cargill RegenConnect™ gives participants access to Regrow’s measurement, reporting and verification tool (MRV), which makes ecosystem markets scalable, accessible and scientifically rigorous. This empowers farmers to adopt regenerative agriculture practices and increases voluntary adoption of these practices.
“Agriculture has an opportunity to utilize carbon markets and regenerative ag to address the global climate challenge and improve economic prospects for farmers,” said Ben Fargher, Vice President of Sustainability in the Cargill Agricultural Supply Chain, North America, when asked about Cargill RegenConnect™.
“Changes made at the roots of our supply chains will deliver the greatest impact in reducing emissions. We are working hand-in-hand with farmers to lead the way, supporting them with tools, resources – and most importantly, market access – to make the shift to regenerative agriculture.”
Cargill RegenConnect™ is currently available to growers across 24 states in the United States, in Canada, across five countries in Europe and in Australia.
Regrow is uniquely able to support such a program due to the global applicability of our tools and approaches, from our remote sensing technology (OpTIS) to our environmental model (DNDC). Furthermore, Regrow’s farmer-first platform provides a seamless experience for growers, which increases usability and promotes higher adoption rates.
Scaling Agriculture Resilience
The partnership between Cargill and Regrow has encouraged both organizations to innovate and expand into new regions and crops. This has been critical in fulfilling Regrow’s mission to make agriculture resilient globally and has empowered Cargill to accelerate progress toward its climate commitments.
Today, the program has many variations (such as a certification branch for cotton in the United States) with continued plans for expansion into new crops and farming practices.
Cargill RegenConnect™ is an accelerator for agriculture resilience. The program provides growers a trusted platform for monetizing climate smart agriculture, establishes a methodology and platform standard for engagement in carbon markets, and illuminates a path to globally-scalable emissions reduction programs for the agriculture industry.
