Truterra, LLC, the sustainability business of Land O’Lakes, Inc., and American Farmland Trust (AFT), along with other partners, have received funding from USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities forf a project aimed at scaling production and addressing equity.
Truterra and AFT’s Climate SMART (Scaling Mechanisms for Agriculture’s Regenerative Transformation) pilot project intends to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by approximately 7.2 million metric tons of CO2e over the course of five years. The project seeks to engage up to 20,000 farmers and dairy producers and impact more than 7 million acres, with a focus on reaching historically underserved farmers.
Ag retailers will play a central role in the pilot project, working with grant partners to incent farmers to adopt regenerative agriculture practices, including helping match farmers with incentives, agronomic advice, peer-to-peer networks, data entry support and more to support improved soil health systems. Grant partners will deploy existing digital infrastructure, including the Truterra sustainability tool, to aid in measuring impact and supporting validation and quantification processes.
The pilot project will use initial funding from USDA and matching funds from grant partners to help incentivize practice changes. Over time, the partners intend for the project to become self-funding through the sale of climate-smart commodities and ecosystem credits to downstream buyers, some of which will be, in turn, reinvested in delivering technical assistance to farmers to support additional practice changes.
Additional partners and supporters include: Ag Gateway, Biofiltro, Continuum Ag, ESRI, Equilibrium Capital, Farmobile, FarmRaise, John Deere, La Crosse Seed, Macquarie, Microsoft, Northern Star Seed, Sound Ag, Strand Gard Stewardship, WinField United, Black Family Land Trust, Farm Credit Council, Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Minorities in Ag, Natural Res. & Related Sciences, Soil Health Institute, ButcherBox, Campbell Soup Company, Green Plains, The Hershey Company, Land O’Lakes Dairy Foods, Nestlé Purina Pet Care, Purina Animal Nutrition, Perdue, Primient, Tate & Lyle, Perennial, Colorado State Univ., SustainCERT and 50 ag retail cooperatives.