Agoro Carbon Alliance’s Ashley Bruner joins us at NAFB Convention in Kansas City to chat about the work they do in the carbon market.
Q: Always enjoy a chat with our friends at Agoro, and we talked extensively with you guys in the past about Agoro’s carbon programs and more. For folks who maybe aren’t familiar, just give us a quick overview of some of the work you guys have been doing with farmers and ranchers, Ashley.
AB: Yeah, absolutely. So we launched in the US in 2021, and since that time we’re working with farmers and ranchers across 34 US states. There was initially some questions and some skepticism about what is this carbon market, is it here to stay? And now we’re seeing a lot more confidence in our interest growing amongst farmers and ranchers.
It’s been really exciting to work and support these people across the US with these practice change and then ultimately delivering high quality carbon credits, which builds revenue for both farmers and ranchers and for our own company.
Q: It’s kind of the Wild west, at least at the beginning it was trying to figure out this whole carbon picture, what this looks like. You’ve been working with carbon buyers, though, and I know you mentioned to me there’s been a lot of questions from producers about how that side of this whole equation works. So what can you tell us about that? What’s some of the work you’ve been doing?
AB: So carbon buyers often come in the form of companies that have made net zero promises or made certain emissions promises that they have to deliver on. And they’re very much interested in carbon offsets as a piece of that and soil carbon, in particular. And that really is an opportunity for farmers and ranchers because the food system is the most critical part of all this that we need to keep strong.
And as a part of that is the work we do with farmers and ranchers, and from a buyer perspective, the questions that we get most often are: how permanent are these changes? How are they going to be long lasting? What additional changes have been made and how is that affecting water quality?
And they really are invested in hearing the stories of the people making these changes on the ground. And they want to know what’s real. They want to know what’s here to stay. And then of course, they want to know how it’s going to become a hike quality credit, which is usually third party verified in most companies. We certainly work with the highest quality carbon certifiers out there.
Q: The whole conversation surrounding carbon, when it comes back to farmers and ranchers, you guys have a lot of resources on your website I know that can help them kind of get started. The carbon calculator, for instance, we’ve touched on that before, things like that.
And really something I always enjoy when you guys talk about this is some folks, they might just automatically disqualify themselves before they even look into working with you guys. And they shouldn’t do that, right?
AB: I understand where they’re coming from because we have a carbon calculator where you can input your county, what practices you’re interested in implementing and then you’ll get an instant quote about how much money you could make from it. And a lot of people say, well, that’s too good to be true.
And just say, probably not for me, but I can encourage you to actually reach out and get a custom assessment directly from our team. My own family, I put in their property and I was like, oh my God. I can see why farmers and ranchers would say this is too good to be true, to make this much income over the time of the contract.
But every farm is different, every ranch is different, and there’s a lot of opportunity out there to capture. And I think it’s really important to consider the contract, what type of support comes with that and what the company is doing, working with third party certifiers to make sure that everything is real.
That’s what buyers are looking for in the long term. And that will ultimately become better revenue for the farmers and ranchers in the long run.