Truterra, LLC And Nori Launch Partnership To Address Major Challenges To Farmer Participation In Carbon Markets

ARDEN HILLS, Minn. and SEATTLE, Oct. 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Truterra, LLC, the sustainability business and subsidiary of Land O'Lakes, Inc., one of America's largest farmer-owned cooperatives, today announced a new pilot project with Nori, a company using blockchain technology to create a new voluntary carbon removal marketplace. The pilot focuses on addressing a key infrastructure challenge holding back the development of an ecosystem services marketplace at scale: the ability to easily translate existing farm data that capture the carbon removal impact of on-farm conservation practices into potential carbon credits that could offer a new viable revenue stream for farmers.

Through the pilot, Truterra is syncing up its best-in-class technology, the Truterra™ Insights Engine, which farmers are already using to generate customized stewardship and profitability data and insights for each field and acre, with Nori's carbon marketplace. Growers will be able to use the data they've already entered into the Truterra™ Insights Engine and other sources of farm data to submit to Nori, at no cost to them, to see the potential value of carbon credits they could generate as a result of the soil health-building practices they have implemented on their farms. Currently, farmers can be paid up to $15 per tonne of carbon sequestered in the soil on Nori's marketplace.

The pilot will make it easier for growers to understand what they have to gain in a carbon market and to use that information to make decisions about their stewardship practices. Under the pilot, farmers will retain full ownership of their data – as they do at all times as part of the Truterra™ Insights Engine– and Nori can provide guidance on how much data to use to qualify for carbon credits.

"As a wholly owned subsidiary of Land O'Lakes, Inc., which is a farmer-owned company, Truterra is focused on developing new ways for our farmers to derive value both from their data and from the stewardship practices they have made the choice to implement on their farms," said Amanda Neely, Senior Manager, Technology and Innovation, Truterra. "There's a lot of excitement and, frankly, some big promises out there about carbon markets and the potential for farmers to derive revenue from them. But private sector markets are still in their early stages and there are still many challenges to address before they can scale and become mainstream. This partnership is designed to identify and address those challenges, and deliver real results and value for the planet and for our farmers, building on the improved profitability and better return-on-investment that farmers in the Truterra network may see as a result of implementing certain conservation practices."

"This is an amazing opportunity to scale with a partner whose goals are aligned with supporting farmer's needs and transitioning to more regenerative supply chains," said Christophe Jospe, Nori co-founder and Chief Development Officer. "Through this effort, we'll help reward farmers for storing carbon, find ways to more efficiently use farm-level operating data and new soil health monitoring and measurement techniques, and build upon the learnings of our pilot to ensure that the Nori program works for the farmer first."

Truterra and Nori are working with a handful of farmers and ag retailers in the Truterra network to develop the pilot during this growing season, which will continue into the 2021-2022 growing season. The partners will continue to add new ag retailer and farmer participants in the coming months.

The pilot partners will apply lessons learned to make carbon markets more accessible to Truterra's network and, ultimately, all of agriculture. Participating in the pilot will also give farmers and ag retailers in the Truterra network an opportunity to directly impact how farmers can be rewarded for good stewardship practices as carbon and ecosystem services markets become more mainstream.  

This partnership is part of Truterra's broader efforts, in addition to its farmer-focused offerings, to create the market conditions to drive demand for stewardship by connecting the dots between what is happening on the farm to consumers.

In June 2020, Jason Weller, Vice President of Truterra, testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee on critical next steps the public and private sectors must take to support viable greenhouse gas and ecosystem markets at scale. Weller joined the other witnesses who testified at the hearing to co-author an opinion piece for Farm Journal on the topic. Truterra is also a founding circle member of the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium, which aims to develop resources to establish a successful ecosystems market, helping incentivize farmers and ranchers to adopt conservation management practices that help improve soil health, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and further efforts to protect and improve water quality.

Truterra has also partnered with world-class companies in the food value chain that are interested in supporting voluntary approaches to helping farmers advance their sustainability, including the Campbell Soup Company, Tate & Lyle, and Nestlé Purina.

With the leadership and support of Truterra's ag retailer network, agronomists and precision ag advisors are using the Truterra™ Insights Engine to work with farmers to benchmark their current stewardship and identify additional practices that would benefit their farm. In turn, Truterra's food value chain company partners are able to track progress against science-based sustainability targets for their supply chains. For example, Truterra and Campbell Soup Company recently announced the results from year two of an agricultural sustainability project in partnership with ag retailer The Mill and farmers in the Chesapeake Bay Region, which, among other things, found that participating acres were greenhouse gas emissions-neutral and, for some acres, net emissions were negative, primarily driven by adoption of conservation tillage and cover crops.

To learn more, visit www.truterraag.com or nori.com/for-growers.

About Truterra, LLC
Truterra (formerly Land O'Lakes SUSTAIN) is a leading stewardship solutions provider, advancing and connecting sustainability efforts throughout the food system with scale – from farmers to ag retailers to partners like food companies. Truterra positions farmers for success by providing them tools and resources to establish a stewardship baseline and track progress on every field they farm. The Truterra™ network brings together the best in agricultural technology and on-farm business management to drive sustainability across the food system, feeding people, safeguarding the planet and supporting farmer livelihoods. Truterra was launched in 2016 by Land O'Lakes, Inc., a member-owned cooperative that spans the spectrum from agricultural production to consumer foods.

About Nori
Nori is establishing a new carbon removal marketplace that leverages existing US Department of Agriculture/Natural Resources Conservation Service ("USDA/NRCS") tools to enable US farmers to estimate, quantify, and monetize incremental soil organic carbon stock change. The company currently has a pilot underway that is signing up US farmers in a program that allows them to sell Nori Carbon Removal Tonnes (NRTs), a new type of carbon asset that represents one tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere. 

CONTACT: info@truterraag.com