World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit Partnerships Manager Kelly Langridge spoke with Jenette Ashtekar, SVP of Product Management at CIBO, ahead of the annual agriculture conference. As part of their discussion, Jenette dived into how CIBO has been evolving our carbon programs.
Kelly: Fantastic, I think we see that as well. It’s really feeling like carbon 2.0 this year whereas last year it was more scattered, but this year we’re seeing a more cohesive program coming through and joining those dots up.
What about CIBO? You used to run a carbon program but have since evolved to create them for other companies like ADM and Cargill. Tell us a bit more about why that is.
Jenette: We still run our own carbon programs. What we do at CIBO is use our technology platform to quantify the impact of what’s happening on the group. What is the carbon footprint of farming and how does that change if we were to change management practices. We’re also able to verify the practices that take place using remote sensing and other means and then deploy resources to the ground to confirm that carbon increases are taking place.
We use our own technology today to run our own programs. Some of these programs include generating carbon credits through VERRA, a major carbon credit registry, or certifying that a grower has completed 3-4 years of regenerative practices.
We do these programs internally to test them out and make sure the technology works. We work with partners to scale them. So it’s not just about CIBO and CIBO making carbon credits and carbon offsets, it’s about CIBO’s technology platform enabling the entire agricultural ecosystem to run their own carbon incentives programs. This is critical because in order to scale the adoption of regenerative practices, these amazing agricultural practices that will help us endure the coming climate crisis, we need to stack incentives.
So a carbon offset credit might not be enough to get the grower over the hump of new practice transition. We want to give growers access to as many different types of incentives programs as possible. To do this, we need to give them access to as many sponsors, enterprises, and companies offering programs as possible.
That’s where CIBO sits. It’s using our technology to enable growers to access a wide variety of carbon incentives programs across the ag ecosystem. Additionally, using this transparent technology platform to maintain integrity across different programs so if CIBO is working with multiple partners to create sustainability programs, we’re able to keep track of each individual piece of land and understand which programs it’s enrolled in so we don’t run into issues like double counting.
Want to learn more? Join us to connect with the CIBO team at our exhibition booth in San Francisco at the World Agri-Tech Conference: https://bit.ly/3tjmpxs
