On March 9th and 10th CIBO was honored to be a Gold Sponsor of the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit and share CIBO’s breakthrough technology platform that accelerates regenerative agriculture with the first, direct-from-the-farmer carbon marketplace. The event was full of 1-1 meetings, interactive group discussions and critical intelligence on the future of the agri-food system. The World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit’s eighth global forum gathered corporates, innovators and investors from across the agriculture and food production supply chain to identify the right business models to commercialize and scale the next generation of solutions.
During the event, Dr. Jenette Ashtekar, VP, Sustainability and Regeneration at CIBO spoke on a panel alongside Niall Mottram of Cambridge Consultants, Aldyen Donnelly of NORI, and Jim Thomason of PLANET. She shared how CIBO has focused tremendously on scaling and modeling for soil carbon sequestration and leveraging public and private information to operate those models at scale.
CIBO is working to accomplish these goals by figuring out the most valuable partnerships. CIBO wants to enable growers to get enrolled in markets, enable companies to understand their carbon footprints in their supply chain and enable buyers to get comfortable with the credits that they are buying.
“For [CIBO] it is about being able to work with anybody who is interested in developing carbon credits and incentives programs for growers.” –Jenette Ashtekar, VP, Sustainability & Regeneration.
The panel focused on the impact of satellite imagery and sustainability monitoring, economics and value creation, and scaling these methods. The chat ended with the speakers sharing their own advice to farmers and how they can get more involved in regenerative agriculture.
These four panelists had great advice for farmers to make this a reality for their farms today including what they should be doing and how they can get involved. With carbon prices still not being completely determined, Niall Mottram suggests waiting for a year or two, especially since this space is fairly new. He believes carbon markets will be a little more certain and advises farmers to wait before leaping into this brand new space right away. However, Aldyen Donnelly had a different perspective and suggests farmers get into this space early while it’s still growing rapidly like it is right now. She thinks farmers should move quickly and educate themselves on the subject. Jim Thomason advised farmers to figure out a way to solve many problems while still being aware of their carbon impact as a great way to move forward. Lastly, Jenette Ashtekar agreed with Aldyen that farmers should talk to anyone that they can to learn as much as they can about the subject.
“If the market signaling is correct, the price of soil carbon should go up over time” –Jenette Ashtekar, VP, Sustainability & Regeneration
The event made it clear that carbon and sustainable agriculture is an exciting and evolving field. However, there is still progress to be made and some unanswered questions for the future. The agricultural world is quickly advancing technologically and we need to figure out the best way to implement integration and consolidation for the next generation of solutions. In case you missed it, all summit content and networking is available on the virtual platform until April 10, 2021.
“This panel discussion highlights how exciting the space is but also how much work we still have to do. There’s a lot of unanswered questions here in terms of who wins, where we see integration and consolidation, what kind of partnerships will evolve, role of private and public sectors. It’s really an exciting space that is still evolving.” –Sarah Nolet, Tenacious Ventures
