Last fall at SB’23 San
Diego,
Bayer and Perdue presented
findings
from their unique partnership aimed at driving regenerative-agricultural
practices
throughout the value chain to cut emissions, reduce environmental impact and
improve soil health at scale.
We caught up with Leo Bastos — SVP of
Global Commercial Ecosystems, Crop Science Division at Bayer — and Perry
Aulie, SVP at Perdue AgriBusiness,
to learn more about the results of the partnership to date and its goals.
What have been some of the key lessons learned from this first partnership with Perdue?
Leo Bastos: We are incredibly excited to see our vision come to reality.
Last year, we announced a company-wide commitment to regenerative agriculture,
knowing we can’t stop with the mentality of “do more with less” — we must focus
on regeneration and doing and restoring even more. We have learned a lot since
we first began our work with Perdue, but the top things that come to mind for me
are:
-
The need for a systems approach — this means treating each farm as an
ecosystem, with its unique soil and environment.
-
Continuous listening and learning from farmers — we must listen and
learn directly from the farmers doing this important work and support them
in adopting practices that aren’t always easy to do and require investment.
This means providing the right knowledge and expertise, tools, and
incentives to make it a viable and desirable business solution.
-
A data-first approach — Precision and digitization allow for the
connection and understanding on the farm but also across the value chain.
Perry Aulie: I agree with so much of what Leo shared and would echo the
value of digital connection. The partnership with Bayer provides a critical
digital footprint in connecting Perdue directly with our farmers through
Climate FieldView. This reach provides us with something
we cannot do ourselves. It also gives us a unique connection with both our
business customers and consumers of our products.
Our growers trust us — we've been working with them for years and many are
already using sustainable farming practices (cover
crops,
no-till)
to reduce GHG emissions. What we have learned is we need to be able to take away
some of the complexity they’ve experienced with regenerative initiatives and
make this easier and less time-consuming on growers. If we do that, we expect to
produce 250 million pounds of low-carbon chicken and low-carbon food oil — which
we look to achieve annually within the next 5 years. If we see sufficient
customer demand, then we’ll get to that number faster.
In your presentation, you mentioned scaling the program — what challenges do you see?
PA: At this point, we are seeing more opportunities than challenges. We are
entering our second growing season with many learnings under our belts and
incredible momentum. The most eye-opening is the value of having our own data
and being directly connected to the farms and seeing the results all the way to
consumer’s plates, or at least to the grocery store. Our biggest challenges will
likely be effectively communicating these results to consumers in a way that
resonates and keeping the momentum going. Farmer engagement has been strong; but
we need to keep this up and keep building on the strong foundation built so far.
LB: Our biggest challenge and focus at Bayer will be to continue
building on our learnings to reach even more farmers while also supporting
Perdue in achieving their sustainability goals. The data we are collecting
from farmers and Perdue allow companies buying the soybean oil or chicken to
benefit from 1) the accuracy of primary data and 2) the removals (which can
be used to achieve Scope 3 carbon-reduction
targets
under FLAG
guidelines).
We must continue to think big but not lose sight of the basic tenets of our
success thus far — farmer engagement and digital connection.
Leo Bastos presents at SB’23 San Diego | Image credit: Sustainable Brands
What KPIs are Perdue using to track success of this program? Are there time-bound goals around these?
PA: Our metrics will focus on carbon reduction and removals, payments made
to farmers, and the volume of low-carbon oil and chicken delivered to our
customers. We plan to review our goals annually and look to double our impact
every year. What we learn from the data we collect is important; however, the
real climate impact will come from capturing carbon in the
soil
and then not releasing it due to cover crops and not tilling. In looking back,
the data that Bayer collected from the growers was used to form a first estimate
of the reductions and removals. Currently, we are in the process of reviewing
these calculations and ensuring we will achieve a trusted, credible carbon
impact.
Calculating or guaranteeing permanence of carbon sequestration in soil can be tricky – how does this factor into your companies' long-term Scope 3 emissions-reduction claims or goals?
LB: It is tricky to calculate or guarantee permanence of carbon
sequestration
and it is an evolving practice. From our perspective, Bayer is committed to
following the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3)
Standard
and the new Land Sector Removal
Guidance to be
released this year. In our programs, participating growers sign up to
continue no-till or strip-till for the program’s length; plus an additional,
10-year retention period as required by the standard for us to monitor and
report these practices. We know that unforeseen circumstances can arise —
such as weather
events
— where reversals may take place, and we will be required to report such
events to our customers and account for these reversals appropriately.
Overall, our goal is to work with growers on their long-term commitment to
support the permanence of carbon sequestration — which is monitored and
verified on a regular basis.
What advice do you have for other companies considering partnerships such as this?
LB: Be open-minded but selective. We can’t aggressively progress unless we
leverage existing supply chains, channels and infrastructures that are already
designed to support farmers in the field. We need to see more partnerships from
different links in the supply chain, coming together to solve this problem. Our
hope is to see more and more companies working together — perhaps, even some
that have historically competed — to continue to create change in agriculture.
The second piece is to ensure you have the right partner and structure in place
to deliver the data and validation needed for high-quality
credits.
We are not seeing apples to apples comparison in the market right now.
PA: I would say you really need to find partners with aligned values and
goals, and the spirit of continuous learning and improvement. Regenerative
agriculture is not new, but our ability to grow and scale and accurately measure
our impact is still maturing. Finding a partner to grow with you is critical.
And most importantly, never lose sight of the farmer at the center. The work and
our ability to drive change starts and ends on the farm.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Jan 31, 2024 8am EST / 5am PST / 1pm GMT / 2pm CET