Farm Foundation President and CEO Shari Rogge-Fidler reflects on her experience at COP28 as part of the Solutions from the Land farmer delegation to Dubai. It was originally published as a LinkedIn article. Solutions from the Land has published additional comments on COP28 on their blog.

I had the distinct honor and privilege of being part of a delegation of US farmers attending the UN climate conference in Dubai, COP28.   As a 5th-generation farm owner and operator from Nebraska, my ancestors began life on the prairie in a sod house made from the soil.  Little did they know that farming was going to go through a huge transformation.  We have learned so much in the last few decades about the importance of soil and how it can be managed for the benefits of agriculture, humans and the environment, including sequestering carbon.

Farmers provide the basic human needs for people – food, fiber for clothing, energy – and ecosystem services for our planet.

For these reasons, it is critical to have farmers at the table for any discussions on changes in the food and agriculture system, to ensure their expertise is leveraged for increased effectiveness as well as preventing unintended consequences of policies and decisions that might detrimentally affect supplying the world with what they need for life.

I was part of the US delegation of 10 farmers who participated in the broader global farmer constituency of approximately 40-50 people from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and more.  We were part of the official “blue zone” where the negotiations occurred, which had approximately 18,000 people.  There was also a “green zone” and a total of 100, 000 people attending the broader activities of COP28.  The farmer constituency met daily to report on progress with the negotiations, highlight issues, and events where a farmer perspective would be helpful or necessary.

The key issues the farmer constituency focused on were ensuring the negotiation process moved forward for food and agriculture and not letting the wishes of a few countries to establish a new and permanent body delay the progress.  The second issue involved editing some of the key documents to include the word “farmer” in the lists of constituents called out as important in the negotiations and implementation, with the view that farmers need to be involved in providing input and guidance on any commitments and implementation.

The farmer constituency had the opportunity to make a formal statement in the room with the leaders of the negotiations early in the process and at the closing session.  We literally had a place and place card at the formal UN table that said “Farmer.”

We also met directly with other key leaders, including US Secretary Vilsack, as well as our own US negotiator and senior climate advisor to hear firsthand how the process was going and to provide feedback.

These opportunities were set in the context of the food and agriculture declaration launched on day one of COP28, garnering the most recently reported and growing number of 152 countries signing on with support, including the US.  We also experienced the historic milestone of a dedicated food and agriculture day, enabling many of the issues and opportunities to be highlighted through dialogues and presentations across the convention space.

The closing statement of the farmer constituency highlighted the disappointment of the documents not including farmers specifically, while mentioning the food system:

“We deeply believe that farmers’ voices must be heard. We call for a greater consideration of our priorities in all decisions that impact us. Climate finance must deliver for all farmers by involving them directly in the design and governance of climate programmes and targeting them as direct recipients of funds. The next round …must raise credible ambition and action for agriculture through the active engagement of farmers in the definition of goals and objectives. Farmers are part of the solution to climate change, and we stand ready to work with you beyond COP28.”

The negotiations lingered longer than the defined stop date, with countries driving for further alignment and agreement on fossil fuels before departing. Regardless of whether the COP process results in significant agreements, the private sector is driving ongoing change and their own commitments to support both climate mitigation and adaptation.

Much like when my ancestors were in the sod house at the cusp of change, so too are we now experiencing a “21st Century Agriculture Renaissance,” as Solutions from the Land calls it, with innovations and advancements making increased contributions to people and the planet.

Farmer voices and expertise needs to be leveraged for both public and private sector commitments to provide insights into the innovations and implications on farms.

Instead of building a sod house as our ancestors did, our family farm is building soil health and integrating technology and innovation for the benefit of many for generations to come.  Farmers around the world are working to build increased food security and nutrition, along with the many other benefits to society.  We gathered in Dubai to collaborate, build, and advance a vision for a vibrant food and agriculture system sustaining our planet throughout the 21st century and beyond.

The post Perspective on COP28: From a Prairie Sod House to Dubai appeared first on Farm Foundation.

First, thanks to Climate Action for including me here as a farmer. I think that’s an important voice and I’m actually wearing three hats here at COP. The only reason I’m here at COP is because I’m first and foremost a farmer and I’m part of a farmer delegation. I was brought here by Solutions from the Land which I think is a really powerful name because farmers are providing solutions from the land. And then the third hat I’m wearing is with Farm Foundation, a 90-year-old think tank/do tank. I’m a practical farmer and Farm Foundation is trying to drive practical solutions. 

First of all, when we say, “connecting the value chain from farm to fork,” even though we usually say, “farm to fork,” it’s often the farms that are last in the conversation and last to the table and last in the solutions. I think we really need to invert that because as a 5th-generation farmer I’m so passionate about the role of farmers in driving solutions. We’re seeing a tsunami of innovations coming from farms all around the world and including on my own farm, and it’s not because we’ve been told to do this. It’s not because we’ve been told to save the planet. It’s not because we’re trying to hit sustainability goals for companies. It’s because we need to do that on our own operations to sustain it for the next generation. With all these innovations going on, it’s a very exciting time to be involved in agriculture.

I come with hope, despite in my first 24 hours of being here feeling frustrated already about COP as they eliminated the word “farmer” from the documents, for example, from the discussions. But the kind soul in the front row over here encouraged me, saying, “You know we don’t have to wait for COP. We are already doing these innovations in the private sector and can keep moving forward.” However, I would say there are four gaps that all of us collectively need to try to solve to drive innovations forward. Some of them are simple, some of them are more complex. The gaps that I see are language gaps, data gaps, resource gaps, and contract gaps for connecting the farm to fork.

Contract gaps: I’ll start with that one. It’s the easiest. So many farms are fragmented and not part of the contracts going on with the big food companies. Sometimes they want to be involved in those contracts, but they don’t know how to connect to the exciting things going on with the other end of the supply chain.

Language gaps: In our own little echo chambers, I think we all think we understand what regenerative ag is, for example. We talk about it, maybe every day. But in my farm community, if you polled our county, I don’t think anyone would know what the word “regenerative agriculture” means. That’s not the language that we use. That one seems like an easy one that we should be able to solve. I think soil health is the connector for us all so let’s connect solutions to soil health when we talk about regenerative agriculture.

Data gaps is one of the more complex ones to solve for. One of our panelists talked about metrics, but it’s not even just the metrics that matter. It’s the data and the data flow that is so disaggregated, fragmented, and we need data interoperability as well. That’s actually part of what Farm Foundation is trying to help solve, some of those pain points.

The fourth one is resource gaps. On my farm I would consider us early adopters. We’ve been doing no till and cover crops for several years. But I’d say we’ve reached a plateau in our ability to drive that forward. We’re having some problems with the stand of our cover crops. And we lack the resources to help us get to the next level in our solutions. I think that’s just one example of the resource gap that we need to try to fill if we want to continue to drive these solutions forward.

Despite those gaps, I come back to the fact that I am optimistic and hopeful. I think we all have to continue to collaborate to close those gaps to continue to drive innovation and solutions forward.

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This past October, I was honored to attend the Global Forum on Farm Policy Innovation (GFFPI), hosted at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) headquarters in Paris. This first-of-its-kind partnership between the Farm Foundation, the Australian Farm Institute, the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, and the Forum for the Future of Agriculture served as a melting pot of ideas and expertise. The event’s primary focus was to leverage our shared passion for sustainability to nurture collaboration in international trade. By bringing together diverse stakeholders, GFFPI aimed to foster innovative policies and practices, driving the agenda of sustainable development through international trade in the global agri-food economy.

As an agricultural economist at the University of Arkansas, I appreciated the global urgency for all countries to collaborate toward a more sustainable agri-food system. I left the event with renewed optimism about the potential for international partnerships to address sustainability concerns via flexible, innovative agri-food trade policy. Here are three areas discussed at the event that I found particularly worth exploring via global collaboration.

1. Global Dialogue on Environmental Impact Reporting

The need for a deeper global dialogue on environmental impact reporting in the agri-food supply chain is of paramount importance. The rising prominence of environmental impact reporting emphasizes its growing influence across the agri-food value chain. As someone deeply engaged in agricultural sustainability, I view these developments with anticipation and caution. The surge in transparency and the increasing demands from consumers and policymakers for clear, honest disclosures have compelled companies to set ambitious emission reduction targets. Yet, robust measurement and reporting challenges are substantial, marked by a landscape rife with inconsistent standards and new directives like the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive mandating Scope 3 emissions reporting.

I applaud the move towards greater transparency, empowering more sustainable production and consumption practices. However, I am also mindful of the potential ramifications. The diversity in methodologies could either spur innovation or sow confusion. A critical concern is whether this surge in reporting might unintentionally marginalize smaller or lower-income producers, who may lack the resources for compliance. The escalation in environmental impact reporting is an irreversible trend that demands vigilance from everyone involved in the food system. Ensuring that the frameworks we adopt genuinely advance sustainability without erecting new barriers is imperative. We must engage critically in these discussions, striving for systems that are transparent, equitable, and supportive of sustainable advancements. In pursuing environmental accountability, we must not lose sight of the intended purpose: to foster a sustainable, inclusive, and equitable agri-food system.

2. Consumer Awareness and Engagement

Increasing consumer awareness and engagement is pivotal in the journey toward sustainable food production, a theme echoed strongly at GFFPI’s workshop. Consumers play a crucial role in driving demand for sustainably produced foods, making their awareness and choices fundamental in shaping the agri-food market. The discussions at the workshop highlighted that an informed consumer base can significantly influence agricultural practices by preferring products that align with sustainable and ethical standards.

Consider gene editing, a revolutionary technology for creating more sustainable food systems. This cutting-edge technique can help develop more resilient crops to climate change, require fewer resources, and yield higher nutritional value. However, the success of gene editing hinges on consumer perceptions and acceptance, as widespread global misperceptions pose a significant barrier to adopting and advancing gene-edited crops. Consumers, often unaware of the benefits of gene editing, might inadvertently impede progress in agricultural sustainability due to these misconceptions. Addressing these misperceptions requires concerted efforts to educate consumers about the global importance of agricultural technology. These efforts must include providing factual information about the reduced need for pesticides, the potential for increased crop yields, and the ability to fortify crops with essential nutrients.

The GFFPI event underscored the need for comprehensive strategies to educate and engage consumers, as informing consumer choices requires supporting innovative technologies that promise a more sustainable agri-food future. As we look towards sustainable solutions in agriculture, ensuring public understanding and acceptance of these new technologies becomes as important as the innovations themselves. In this endeavor, it is vital to recognize that consumer education is a two-way street. The agri-food industry must not only disseminate information but also actively listen to and address consumer concerns, meeting people where they are in their understanding and perceptions. This approach fosters a dialogue-based relationship where consumer feedback can guide and improve industry practices. Policies worth exploring might include clearer labeling, public awareness campaigns, and collaboration between policymakers, producers, and retailers to facilitate easier access to sustainable food choices. Such efforts are crucial in building a more sustainable agri-food system, where consumer choices are not just about personal preference but also about contributing to global sustainability goals. By engaging consumers as active participants in the sustainability conversation, we can ensure that evolution within the agri-food sector aligns with both environmental imperatives and societal needs.

3. Economic Viability and Productivity Through Technology and Innovation

Environmental sustainability in agriculture is incomplete without economic viability for producers. Achieving a balance between these two elements is essential for the long-term sustainability of the agri-food sector. At the core of this balance is the understanding that economic productivity and environmental stewardship are not mutually exclusive; they can be synergistic when approached through innovative technologies and practices.

Consider advancements like artificial intelligence (AI), which has the potential to revolutionize agricultural practices. AI can optimize resource use, enhance crop yields, and reduce environmental impacts, thereby increasing the economic viability of farming while adhering to sustainability principles. For instance, precision agriculture, powered by AI, allows for the precise application of water, fertilizers, and pesticides, reducing waste and environmental damage. Similarly, AI-driven data analytics can provide insights for better crop management and decision-making, enhancing productivity and sustainability.

Transitioning to sustainable practices often requires initial investments that can be challenging for farmers, particularly smallholders. Subsidies, incentives, and fair compensation might play a critical role. By offsetting the initial costs and risks associated with adopting new technologies and practices, these financial mechanisms can make it more feasible for farmers to transition toward sustainable agriculture. They also serve as a recognition of the environmental services that sustainable farming provides.

Modern sustainability challenges require modern, innovative solutions. Policy decisions must be mindful of supporting the development of technologies that are accessible and affordable for farmers of all scales and regions. Innovations should not only focus on high-tech solutions but also on sustainably improving traditional practices. For example, integrating indigenous knowledge with modern technology can lead to more holistic and effective agricultural practices.

The challenge lies in ensuring that these technological innovations and economic incentives are designed and implemented in a way that truly supports sustainable agriculture. Collaboration among governments, private sectors, researchers, and farmers is required to develop solutions that are practical, scalable, and aligned with both environmental and economic objectives. Indeed, advancements in the agri-food sector must continue to evolve in a way that supports the planet and its people, ensuring the economic viability of farming while safeguarding the environment for future generations.

Toward Heightened Global Cooperation

International cooperation is indispensable in addressing the multifaceted sustainability challenges in the agri-food system. The complexities of global food production and consumption patterns necessitate a collaborative approach that transcends borders, integrating long-term sustainability goals with practical, immediate actions. This approach involves harmonizing policies and practices across nations while acknowledging and respecting regional and cultural differences. Meaningful dialogue between the public and private sectors is pivotal. Governments can set the sustainability agenda through public policy, regulatory reform, and incentives, enabling sustainable practices. Through public-private partnerships, agricultural policy might accelerate the private sector’s capacity for innovation, allowing the private sector to bring new technologies and processes to the forefront. The symbiotic relationship between these two sectors is essential for driving meaningful progress towards sustainability.

Furthermore, international cooperation is key to emphasizing open trade, transparency, and establishing common standards. Open trade facilitates the exchange of goods, services, and knowledge, fostering an efficient and sustainable global marketplace. Transparency builds trust and accountability, ensuring that all stakeholders, from farmers to consumers, are well-informed and engaged. Common standards, meanwhile, provide a benchmark for sustainability, ensuring that practices and products meet agreed-upon environmental and social criteria. Flexibility is also crucial in this global framework. Agricultural practices are deeply rooted in local cultures and ecosystems; thus, solutions must be adaptable to different regional contexts. What works in one part of the world may not be suitable for another, and policies must be sensitive to these differences.

The GFFPI workshop underscored the importance of global collaboration in tackling sustainability challenges. As a participant, I witnessed firsthand the power of diverse perspectives coming together to shape a resilient and sustainable future for agriculture. This experience reinforced my belief in the collective commitment required to make a lasting impact. It’s not just about individual actions but how we, as a global community, can unite our efforts and resources to create a sustainable agri-food system that benefits global society. The path ahead is complex and challenging, but with continued collaboration, innovation, and commitment through events like the GFFPI workshop, we can forge a prosperous and sustainable future for generations to come.

A version of this blog first ran in the November 23, 2023, issue of Farm Institute Insights, a publication of the Australian Farm Institute. It is reposted with permission.

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1. Strong public incentives for the transition to low-carbon agriculture

As signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement, our two countries are aiming for climate neutrality by 2050. Various policy levers are therefore being put in place to encourage the decarbonization of the economy, with a specific focus on agriculture. In France, the national Low  carbon strategy (Stratégie Nationale Bas Carbone) imposes guidelines and paths for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, and the Ministry of Ecological Transition has set up a carbon certification framework (the Label Bas Carbone) to reward the efforts of economic players to reduce their emissions and store carbon. In the United States, there is a long-term strategy including pathways to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050[1]. The government is encouraging nature-based solutions^[2], and in particular climate-smart agriculture and forestry^[3], with its conservation agriculture practices to increase soil carbon storage, says Garth Boyd, a partner in the consulting firm The Context Network and Farm Foundation Round Table Fellow.

2. Numerous private players are supporting farmers in their low-carbon transition

Changing practices to reduce GHG emissions and store more carbon is a complex, technical, and costly operation for farmers. That is why a number of private players are helping them to make the transition.

In France, this is the case at Terrasolis, an innovation hub or low-carbon agriculture, which piloted the CarbonThink project, pointed out Carole Leverrier, director of Terrasolis. For his part, Edouard Lanckriet, development director at Agrosolutions, part of the InVivo Group, presented the consulting firm’s role in the drafting of the Label Bas Carbone methodology for field crops, and has developed Carbon Extract, a support tool for cooperative technicians and farmers. Similarly, Anaël Bibard, president of FarmLeap (a platform that uses farmers’ data to improve their performance), and also president of the Climate Agriculture Alliance (which brings together a number of European companies specializing in low-carbon agriculture), stressed the need for these players to work together to ensure that their actions are both coherent and impactful.

On the U.S. side, François Guérin, director of government affairs for Europe, Middle East and Africa at ADM International, broadened the subject of low-carbon agriculture to include regenerative agriculture. He presented his company’s commitment to this type of agriculture in order to reduce GHG emissions, improve soil health, protect water quality and biodiversity, sequester carbon and improve farm resilience^[4] . ADM is working to develop sustainability indices by working with companies such as Farmers Business Network, a specialist in agricultural data^[5].

3. Manufacturers are turning away from the carbon finance market (offsetting), preferring to decarbonize their own value chains (insetting).  

For Edouard Lanckriet, voluntary carbon finance is not adapted to agriculture. It was created for other sectors where the permanence of carbon storage is not an issue. This is not the case for agricultural carbon storage. Specific rules must therefore be devised for voluntary agricultural carbon finance.

The problem of farmers double-counting their decarbonization efforts was highlighted by Anaël Bibard, who insisted on the need for collaboration between stakeholders o avoid this problem: efforts made by the same farmers but in different programs may in fact be counted several times (for example, one relating to a sector and the other to the entire farm), due to a lack of consistency between accounting systems.

The transparency of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) methods based on the data collected is one of the keys to robustness, and therefore to confidence in the carbon credits generated. Each method makes different choices between modeling (based on drone or satellite imagery) and soil analysis, and must strike a balance between competitive pricing (which restricts the number of soil analyses), time spent collecting agricultural data compatible with the schedules of the farmer and his advisor, the quantity and quality of the raw data needed to feed the mathematical models, and finally the reliability of the latter. Anaël Bibard and Edouard Lanckriet agreed on this point, stressing the role of digital farm management systems to collect, store and manage several hundred to several thousand data points for each farm.  The key is to build credible programs, summarized Garth Boyd.

The latter highlighted a number of past failures that have undermined the confidence of producers and buyers of agricultural carbon credits. While certain carbon offset certification frameworks such as VCS or Gold Standard are internationally recognized, some programs using them have revealed flaws in the implementation of practices. Similarly, a carbon exchange opened in Chicago (the Chicago Climate Exchange), but failed in 2010 after a ten-year effort. Carbon prices collapsed due to a lack of verification and robustness in the quality of carbon credits. There’s plenty to give pause to farmers and buyers who wanted to get started.

In the end, the reason why voluntary agricultural carbon finance is not developing more in the form of offsetting schemes is due to a lack of confidence in the quality of the carbon credits generated by farmers: are they permanent? are they calculated correctly? The transition to low-carbon agriculture, and more broadly, regenerative agriculture, is today better financed by insetting premiums corresponding to Scope 3 emissions, which are simpler to set up and meet the specifications set by the food industry itself, without going through carbon finance, notes Garth Boyd.

He pointed out that various companies use the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to measure, account for and manage their emissions. Examples include McDonald’s, Corteva, BASF and Unilever. The Protocol distinguishes three different emission scopes: direct emissions in Scope 1, indirect emissions linked to energy consumption in Scope 2, and other indirect emissions (upstream and downstream) in Scope 3. 

For his part, Edouard Lanckriet pointed out that the international Science-Based Targets (SBTi) methodological framework has been chosen by many companies to decarbonize their Scope 3. How can we link decarbonization frameworks for agricultural production, such as the French Label Bas Carbone, and those for industrial transformation, such as SBTi? Unfortunately, this issue has not yet been resolved^[6] .

4. Farmers looking for value: “Show me the money“

“Show me the money”: that’s how Garth Boyd sums up the attitude of farmers, who only take the risk of committing to these transitions if there’s a return on investment (new farm equipment, new seeds, and plant cover in particular). They are looking for a return on their investment after having shared their technical and economic data with MRV tool suppliers, which of course requires data privacy guarantees. 

According to Anaël Bibard, only 3% of farmers are engaged in these transitions with precision agriculture. To increase adopting significantly, data management is not the only issue.  It is necessary to support the use of data, it is also necessary to acculturate farmers to these practices and maximize their efficiency.

The results of the CarbonThink project supported by Terrasolis showed that the carbon footprint reduction potential for field crops was only 20% using the Label Bas Carbone’s field crops methodology, which is not very much, but is already a good lever for getting the process underway. For Carole Leverrier, the low-carbon approach needs to be complemented by co-benefits to attract more farmers to this transition, thus moving closer to the regenerative agriculture approach.   

Conclusion

For the time being, isn’t the value concentrated on the one hand with consultancies and companies providing costly MRV tools, and on the other with agri-food manufacturers who promote low-carbon or regenerative agriculture as a marketing tool? This raises two questions. Which link(s) in the value chain is (are) legitimate to make claims? We are convinced that farmers are, and that their efforts need to be better rewarded, so that more of them commit to and massively adopt these practices, in order to have a real impact on mitigating climate change and improving environmental health.

To find out more :

• Farm Foundation, issue report by Alejandro Plastina (May 2022) The U.S. voluntary agricultural carbon markets: where to from here?
• Agridées, Note de think tank, Marie-Cécile Damave (May 2022) Agriculture: reconciling economic profitability and climate action
• Farm Foundation, video of the Solving the barriers to agricultural carbon markets forum (April 2022)
• Agridées, video of the conference Regenerative agriculture: marketing concept or paradigm shift? (June 2022)
• Farm Foundation, video of the Emerging Carbon Markets in Agriculture: Issues and Opportunities (March 2021)

Footnotes

[1] United States Department of State and the United States Executive Office of the President (November 2021) The long term strategy of the United States – Pathways to Net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050

[2] White House (November 2022) Opportunities to accelerate nature-based solutions: a   roadmap for climate progress, thriving nature, equity, & prosperity

[3] See the dedicated USDA page: https://www.usda.gov/climate-solutions

[4] See ADM website: Second Year of ADM re:generations^TM Brings additional incentives and choices – USDA grant helps ADM expand state programs (June 30, 2023) 

[5] See the announcement of July 21, 2022: ADM, Farmers Business Network to expand sustainable AgTech platform

[6] On this point, see the article published on the Terrasolis website on March 10, 2022: Low Carbon Label and SBTi, what are the  synergies and  challenges?

This blog was co-written by Agridées Head of Innovation and International Affairs Marie-Cécile Damave and Farm Foundation Vice President of Programs and Project Martha King, both of whom served as moderators at the event. The version in French can be found at Agridées.

Photo courtesy of Marie-Anne Omnes – Agricultural Specialist, Office of Agricultural Affairs, U.S. Embassy of the United States.

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The event gathered agricultural economists to share ideas and research on global agricultural productivity. Dr. Sun Ling Wang, senior economist at the USDA’s Economic Research Service and Dr. Jessica Agnew, associate director of CALS Global at Virginia Tech, organized the event along four key thematic questions: 

• How can different methodologies result in distinct productivity estimates, and does it matter? 
• How does public R&D and patent knowledge stock affect agricultural productivity growth? 
• How does climate change influence agricultural productivity growth and what are the consequences? 
• What are the causes and consequences of agricultural productivity growth? 

In his opening remarks, Stefanou rejected the notion that agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) will necessarily exacerbate environmental degradation and identified the need for “productivity growth that preserves natural resources.”  

The presentation then continued with a consideration of how global agricultural productivity research fits into the framework Stefanou put forward. Agronomist Dr. Tom Thompson, associate dean and director of global programs at Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, which houses the GAP Initiative, summarized the GAP Initiative’s vision as a world in which “every farmer has access to every tool,” whether agronomic, economic, or environmental. He went on to describe the GAP Initiative’s progress in “promoting evidence-based solutions,” leveraging research such as that done by the more than 40 agricultural productivity economists attending the workshop. 

Considering Inputs and Environmental Accounting 

After opening remarks, the day’s sessions focused on topics such as measuring inputs in agricultural productivity analysis, with discussion centering on biological capital, irrigation water value, hedonic pricing in seed markets, and seed breeding impacts on productivity; and the interplay between climate and agricultural productivity growth, touching on extreme weather, changing crop yields, agricultural trade impacts, and long-term climate scenarios.  

The first day of the workshop also included several presentations assembled around environmental accounting in agricultural productivity analysis. Presenters addressed environmental stress on productivity, undesired climactic outputs, environmentally-adjusted TFP measures, and environmental factor accounting in TFP. A panel discussion concluded the day by further diving into environmental accounting. 

The workshop continued on the second day with a focus research and development analysis. A report on the agriculture venture capital landscape began the morning, and preceded presentations on Chinese R&D and its effects on agricultural productivity, the US patent knowledge stock, as well as research into the lag between research and observable effects and solutions.  

Then, two sessions themed around drivers of productivity growth and its climactic consequences featured presentations on food security implications of climate change, a case study of agricultural productivity growth in Argentina, and the relationship between farm labor and climate. Papers in the second of these two sessions discussed poverty reduction and agricultural productivity, climate change-induced crop yield growth, extreme heat and productivity, as well as the criteria of productivity indices under climate change.  

Perspectives from the Public and Private Sector 

Tying together the two days of productivity analysis papers, the workshop’s final presentations focused on the private and public realm. These applied presentations reminded attendees of the importance of their economic research on agricultural productivity by providing the real-world context. 

Dr. Elise Golan from the Office of the Chief Economist of USDA identified key challenges facing policymakers, and how solutions discussed in the room would help advance the fight against food insecurity, shrinking farmer incomes, and environmental degradation. Ruth Bradley, a representative from Tyson Foods Agribusiness, outlined how Tyson’s business plan offers solutions to the problems that Golan identified. Attendees then heard from Jennifer Billings, global agricultural development lead at Corteva, a supporting partner of the GAP Initiative. Billings detailed how Corteva is helping farmers across the Global South to grow agricultural productivity in the face of a shifting climate.  

Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Global Programs, which houses the GAP Initiative and hosted the workshop at the Innovation Campus, is committed to building public-private partnerships, showcasing agricultural productivity research, and creating opportunities for ideation in this space. This co-hosted workshop did just that. Agnew, co-lead of the GAP Initiative, concluded the two-day workshop with remarks on how the GAP Initiative is the ideal platform for academics, policymakers, and private sector partners to convene and make progress in feeding the world, while doing so responsibly and sustainably in a changing climate. 

Evan McKay is a participant in the 2023 Farm Foundation Agricultural Scholars program. He is a first-year master’s student in agricultural and applied economics at Virginia Tech, where he focuses on commodity markets, risk management, and agricultural productivity. He previously studied French West Africa and the Middle East before working in oil and gas finance. Evan hopes to pursue a career in international commodities markets and one day return to Virginia to farm. 

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The panel represented a wide variety of view points, covering the legal, policy, and practical sides of water rights and policy. Dan Tarlock, university distinguished professor emeritus and professor of law emeritus at Chicago-Kent College of Law, presented the legal precedent influencing current policy, with a focus on water rights as enacted east of the Missouri River. He was followed by Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. She focused on how water rights and policies are expressed in the Colorado Basin, which impacts five million acres of agriculture across seven states. Round Table Fellow Matt Moreland, owner of Moreland Farms, gave a boots-on-the-ground perspective, discussing how water rights play out on his property in Oklahoma.

The panel was moderated by Farm Foundation Round Table Honorary Life Fellow Richard Morrison, manager of RNM Enterprises.

The presentation materials are linked below.

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During her presentation, Alzbeta Klein, CEO/Director General, International Fertilizer Association, summed up the situation as: “We have a triple challenge ahead of us and that is: how do we make sure that fertilizers are available, how do we make sure that they are affordable in all parts of the world, and how do we do that sustainably?”

Klein was joined by Farm Foundation Board Member Cheri De Jong, principal owner of Natural Prairie Dairy and owner and CFO of AgriVision Farm Management; Corey Rosenbusch, president and CEO of The Fertilizer Institute; Karl Theis, founder, and Linda Thrasher, president and co-founder, of Greenfield Nitrogen. The panel was moderated by Farm Foundation Round Table Fellow Jay Vroom, chief innovation officer at Vroom Leigh Agriculture, LLC.

Included in the discussion were two technologies being currently used to create innovative fertilizer sources close to where they will be used – one using electrolysis and the other using mechanical vapor recompression. The presenters also discussed current market conditions affecting fertilizer production worldwide.

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Farm Foundation, an accelerator of practical solutions for agriculture, has named Dr. Trey Malone as its 2023 Agricultural Economics Fellow. Malone is a food and agricultural economist whose primary research interests are agribusiness entrepreneurship and resiliency in agri-food supply chains. 

Farm Foundation’s Agricultural Economics Fellow program is a yearlong program for a faculty agricultural economist. The 2023 fellowship is focused on sustainable food systems and will provide an opportunity to work with diverse stakeholders on integrated systems approaches to building more sustainable food systems, with a special focus on agricultural production approaches.

In addition to being mentored by staff in USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist, Malone in turn will mentor participants in the Farm Foundation and USDA Economic Research Service Agricultural Scholars program, among other engagements.

“We are excited to welcome Dr. Malone to our Agricultural Economics Fellowship program,” says Martha King, vice president of programs and projects at Farm Foundation. “His perspectives on agribusiness and consumer behavior will be an invaluable resource and will serve as a unique springboard for collaboration.”

As part of his fellowship, Malone will author a Farm Foundation Issue Report, adding to his considerable body of publications and accolades. Since 2016, he has published more than 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has won multiple research awards, including the Emerging Scholar Award from the Southern Agricultural Economics Association and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Research and Communication from the Food Distribution Research Society. 

He currently serves as co-editor of the Agricultural & Resource Economics Review and managing editor of the International Food & Agribusiness Review.  He is also an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Arkansas. Prior to this, he was an assistant professor and extension economist in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. 

He holds master’s and doctorate degrees in agricultural economics from Oklahoma State University and a bachelor’s degree from Rockhurst University.  His insights have been featured in popular press outlets, including the New York Times, CNBC, USA Today, Fast Company, and Popular Science.

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This is an exciting time in soil health, with USDA unleashing $2.8 billion in funding for climate-smart commodity agriculture. The hope is that organizations receiving grants for soil health work will spend this money in a manner that best serves the public interest.

Working together to fix the soil health tech stack is part of this process. We can do this by harmonizing and standardizing soil measurement data and analysis. This will build a thriving marketplace that rewards farmers and ranchers for taking actions and delivering outcomes that result in healthier soils and carbon sequestration.

The concept of the soil health tech stack — the three-layer graphic below — and the need to bridge its layers were introduced in September 2021 in an article by my colleague, Seana Day.

Over several months in 2022, Farm Foundation and its partners, including The Mixing Bowl and TomKat Ranch, held three interwoven events to address the challenges of the soil health tech stack. Specifically, we looked to bridge soil data interoperability, calibration, or standardization, and ease the movement of digital information between the entities collecting, analyzing, and taking action with soil-centric data.

An Overview of Fixing the Soil Health Tech Stack Events

Soil Sampling Campaign: In May to June 2022, robust soil sampling took place at TomKat Ranch, an 1,800-acre regenerative cattle ranch in Pescadero, California. Point Blue Conservation Science, along with students from Skidmore College working with the non-profit The Soil Inventory Project collected over 1,000 soil samples. These were analyzed for total percent carbon by dry combustion at three separate analytical laboratories. Bulk density was measured at a subset of sampling locations to create a robust soil carbon data layer across five pastures where TomKat had applied treatment regimes.

The Soil Data Hack: The Purdue Open Agriculture Technology Systems (OATS) Center took the soil data results from the campaign to create a publicly available data set and combined it with TomKat’s historical soil data and other soil data sets. This was to establish a data foundation for a soil data hack that took place during the “Fixing the Healthy Soils Tech Stack” virtual conference from August 23 to 24, 2022. 

All of the soil data was put into the MODUS data standard. MODUS defines data terminology, metadata and file transfer formats to expedite the exchange, merging, and analysis of soil and other agriculture testing data. It is used by some but not all soil labs today.

AgGateway’s Laboratory Data Standardization Working Group is upgrading MODUS to MODUS 2.0 and is a key proponent of its wide-range adoption by all labs analyzing soil. As AgGateway outlines here, the use of standardized soil data can help scale the efficiency of a low-margin business, decrease errors, improve lab turnaround times, and feed data to farm management information systems (FMIS) for analysis and recommended action. 

The Soil Data Hack, a two-day hackathon-style event, was designed to make tangible progress toward fixing the soil health tech stack by encouraging participating developers to create open source code to help with the transfer and presentation of soil-related data in a common medium. 

Fixing the Soil Health Tech Stack Conference: The virtual event was four hours long on both Tuesday, August 23rd and Wednesday, August 24th, 2022. The broad arc of the conference topics included an overview of the soil data hack, the concept of the soil health tech stack, and how to fix it.

Results From the Fixing the Soil Health Tech Stack Events
The soil sampling campaign helped us develop a clean data set in the MODUS data format. It also helped us better understand the disparity in lab analysis, as two labs got the same soil samples and came back with different results for both soil carbon and bulk density.

During the two days of the Soil Data Hack, the hackers:

• Took the MODUS-based soil data and turned it into a JSON format
• Fed the data into a business intelligence and data visualization system (Power BI)
• Pulled it into OpenTEAM‘s open source FarmOS FMIS
• Leveraged FarmOS to associate soil data to GPS lat/long
• Used RDF (a World-Wide Web Consortium standard data description and exchange format) to put soil data on the blockchain and make it available for Regen Network’s carbon credit program
• Linked the MODUS data to any HTML browser for visualization
• Used HTML to compare different soil data

The virtual conference revealed broad recognition for the need to fix the soil health tech stack. Videos from the virtual conference and hackathon are live on the Farm Foundation YouTube channel. The videos include the conference sessions and also the report-out from the hackathon. 

Weaving Together Existing Solutions
Through our events, we determined that, by weaving together existing solutions, we can make great strides in fixing the soil health tech stack. Specifically:

• A dynamic framework for monitoring soil health exists as part of  Point Blue Conservation Science’s Range-C and forthcoming Crop-C Monitoring Projects.
• A solid data collection method exists with The Soil Inventory Project’s approach for in-field, distributed soil sampling and transfer of samples to soil labs for analysis.
• A lab sample prep standard operating protocol exists in what the Soil Health Institute has developed, and it will help minimize testing errors and variance between soil labs.
• A soil data standard exists in the form of MODUS 2.0 as maintained by AgGateway.
• Sovereign MODUS soil data exchange can occur through platforms like Purdue OATS Trellis to transfer data to XML or JSON. It can also ink to other interoperable farm data applications like OpenTEAM’s FarmOS and Ag Data Wallet, the USDA’s Producer Operational Data System or other FMIS programs. The key point to underscore is that data transfer tools exist to enable the data owner to manage what data is shared when and with whom.
• Large-scale open aggregated MODUS soil data sets can be made available for analysis through tools like the OpenTEAM Digital Farmer Coffee Shop.  

Additional effort is now required to build out the interoperability between these tools and others. 

The 8-Step Action Plan to Fix the Soil Health Tech Stack

1. Upgrade and invest in soil health testing infrastructure

It is widely acknowledged that the United States has the most robust soil lab infrastructure in the world. However, much of that infrastructure was established to measure soil type and soil chemical nutrient levels. With more focus on soil organic carbon and rising interest in microbial analysis, we need to upgrade soil lab capabilities to account for new demands.

In addition to physical measurement equipment, we should also add knowledge management infrastructure to enable the digitization of lab data in a way that will support levels of provenance, attribution, and sharing consent management.

We should also not overlook the need to train and staff an adequate number of lab personnel facile with the new testing equipment and digital data tools.   

2. Expand the use of standardized soil field collection methods to create a national soil health inventory database

Non-profit project The Soil Inventory Project (TSIP) was awarded a $20 million USDA grant to fund climate-smart practice adoption on 120,000 acres nationwide, and apply their distributed inventory system to monitor soil health outcomes. This effort is part of their wider effort to create a distributed national soil health database using scientifically proven and affordable methods for collecting and analyzing soil data. With its USDA grant, TSIP is better positioned to help other organizations overcome the cost and burden of collecting large-scale soil data in the field.

We should also embrace the further development of new techniques and methods that can ease the time and resource burden of in-situ soil sampling. Additionally, with the establishment of a large, ground-truthed soil database, one day we may hopefully be able to undertake soil analysis simply through the use of airborne remote sensors. 

Soil data should be aggregated in a national soil health inventory database (such as the The Soil Inventory Project is undertaking). That database should be an accessible versioned, searchable registry of measurement protocols enabling interoperability of results. Machine learning data sets may be fed input from multiple models (field measurement, lab measurement, and remote sensing) and a registry of measurement protocols will allow the comparison and calibration of analysis between measurement methods.  

Of course, soil data should be shared securely in an anonymized and aggregated fashion to establish regional baselines along the lines of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable & Reusable) data standards. 

3. Embrace standardized frameworks for field monitoring of soils

To promote apples-to-apples monitoring of agricultural lands, common frameworks and stratification tools should be promoted to help farmers and ranchers select indicators, develop study areas, determine how many samples to take and when and how to ensure data quality. Point Blue and its partners have received a USDA grant to promote the adoption of the Range-C Monitoring Framework to assist farmers, ranchers, and researchers with these tasks. Future standards such as Crop-C will be versioned to adapt to upgrades in technology and new protocols referenced in a common shared registry.

4. Promote and adopt lab soil sample preparation standard operating procedures

To minimize the discrepancies that can result from different labs handling soil sample testing differently, we recommend an effort be made to promote all soil labs to abide by the Soil Health Institute’s soil sample preparation standard operating procedures that were developed as part of their “North American Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurement.”

Labs can capture whether they have followed the protocols through tools made in Survey Stack or the Question Set Library. It will be helpful to have information related to the protocols in the metadata that travels with soil samples from the field through lab testing.

We should also allow for the Soil Health Institute SOPs to keep a registry of versions and that labs can capture the SOP version they are following when they are undertaking a soil analysis.

5. Promote the development of tools using MODUS to make it the standard format to harmonize soil data

We need to see MODUS adopted as the data output of soil labs. AgGateway is the leader in seeing the MODUS data format application in agriculture, and deploying infrastructure to make the definitions of its codes be machine-readable and machine-actionable. Right now they are in the process of promoting the 2.0 version and we should anticipate future versions will arise. Labs should make soil analysis results available in MODUS and available to clients online (in online data formats like CSV, JSON or FarmOS, not just in hard copy or PDF format).

During our two-day hackathon, we saw both a state government’s department of agriculture as well as a large digital agtech company commit to using the MODUS-based tools we developed. We should leverage these “early adopters” to refine the tools and then promote them heavily to gain adoption.  

Adoption of standardized soil data tools should not be limited to the US. The MODUS data standard needs to become a global format for soil data. Additionally, we should anticipate the need for data standards for future soil analysis. For instance, FAO’s GLOSOLAN has already created a standard approach for soil spectroscopy that should be promoted for global harmonization. Internationally focused actors like CGIAR, OpenGEOHub, and LandPKS are potential allies to create a global soils ledger.

The simplest way to promote MODUS is to provide resources for the development of MODUS-based tools and to promote the use of MODUS-based tools amongst the developer community.

6. Address sovereignty of agriculture data

While technical solutions exist to maintain a farmer or rancher’s sovereignty over data and data sharing, many in agriculture are unaware of these solutions; most software solutions in agriculture do not use these tools today. We need a conversation to get over the constant boogeyman of “data privacy” so that we can provide those who choose to share data the confidence that those receiving data will use it in a transparent manner for appropriate purposes.

Conditional data use agreements and consent management processes controlled by the producer need to be more widely embraced. The conversation needs to include the benefit to the farmer/rancher of sharing data and also needs to address (beyond technical matters) the social and legal aspects of implementing a trusted solution. 

7. Get soil health data on the balance sheet

We need a discussion on how to account for soil data on the balance sheets of farming and ranching operations. Is it possible to create a single score that encompasses the soil health of agricultural land (similar to a corn suitability rating, for instance)?

While there are emerging markets for soil carbon and other environmental marketplaces, financial recognition of healthy soils appears to be undervalued by land buyers, lenders, and insurers.

Research exists to show the long-term benefits of healthy agricultural soils. Tools do exist to score soil health, to hold environmental claims data and to enable benchmarking of data. However, where are market participants like banks and insurance companies in terms of adopting the use of soil health assessment tools in their financial products? 

8. Adopt a common semantic infrastructure for soil health

An additional source of friction occurs when different layers of a tech stack use different semantics (e.g., variables, controlled vocabularies, etc.) because this introduces the need to map/translate among them.

We need to develop and adopt a semantic infrastructure (a common set of variable definitions and their associated controlled vocabularies, distributed using APIs) shared across the tech stack to make communications easier. AgGateway’s Agrisemantics Working Group is implementing such an infrastructure to distribute MODUS Codes, their definitions, and other semantic resources.

With the addition of the semantic infrastructure, the soil health tech stack now looks like this:

There was keen interest amongst the event participants to turn our talk into action and our refine our tools to fix the soil health tech stack. I welcome your ideas on how we can move forward collaboratively on these initiatives.

Rob Trice is founding partner of The Mixing Bowl and Better Food Ventures. Other contributions to and reviews of this article include: Aaron Ault (Purdue Open Ag Technology Center). Chelsea Carey (Point Blue Conservation Science), Kris Covey (The Soil Inventory Project & Skidmore College) Dorn Cox (OpenTEAM), Andres Ferreyra (Syngenta; AgGateway member/volunteer), Martha King (Farm Foundation), Wendy Millet (TomKat Ranch), Cristine Morgan (Soil Health Institute), Liz Rieke (Soil Health Institute), Drew Zabrocki (Semios).

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On September 21 and 22, Farm Foundation convened a group of experts in Atlanta, Georgia, to examine modeling approaches to assess the size of the US and global land-based carbon sinks, and the costs of accessing those sinks. Modelers were invited to present their latest methods and research findings at the USDA Carbon Sinks Meeting. A special issue of the Carbon Balance and Management journal will be developed for authors to publish their papers. Funding for the event was provided by USDA Economic Research Service. Nava and Sellars attended the conference.

The USDA Carbon Sinks Modeling Meeting showcased the mathematical modeling capabilities of researchers across the whole scientific spectrum to achieve a common goal: Using farms as carbon sinks to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. At the meeting, economists showcased how governments can create market incentives to nudge farmers into shifting their land uses towards environmentally friendly uses, as long as the price is right. Climate modelers discussed their advances in climate scenario forecasting such that we can learn where the best opportunities are, using state-of-the-art techniques to understand how emissions affect climate scenarios and provided us with accurate climate outlooks. This provided important insight to determine both if we are making improvements in carbon sequestration and where carbon sequestration must take place to have the highest potential.

The success of these efforts requires the support and understanding of farmers. To create connections between individual farmers and the scientific community, the extension community has created educational materials for farmers on the economic, environmental, and societal benefits of their land use decisions. Land allocation decisions, for instance, are a reflection of both market incentives (i.e., expected returns) and an elaborated government structure of subsidies. USDA representatives discussed how government officials employ their models to determine how and why a policy incentive will nudge economic agents into making decisions that are not only beneficial for the individual, but for the whole society.

Nevertheless, there remains work to be done in these efforts. It is not enough to say that as long as the price is right, farmers will shift land uses. While economists are able to model markets and infer the effect of public policies for their economic agents, few efforts are in place to use climate scenarios and atmospheric scientists’ understanding of droughts and floods in their models beyond “the causal effect of X on Y.” Similarly, the extension community has educated farmers on the profit potential of adopting government-sponsored programs, but how can the data modeling community make sure farmers understand that a climate scenario is something that is not part of a distant future?

Soon, it should be possible to put together the first model that incorporates the economics, the science, and the art of farms as carbon sinks. This meeting demonstrated that the tools exist to do this individually. The modeling community should be able to model economic incentives, climate, and the perception of climate, all together.

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