Yara Launches International Agoro Carbon Alliance
With an invitation for farmers co-ops, ag retailer and distributers, technology leaders, lenders, insurance and food companies, Yara launched its Agoro Carbon Alliance as an international effort.
Terje Knutsen, executive vice president of Yara says the call to action is to feed the planet and decrease the emissions from agriculture.
“Agriculture is responsible for 20 to 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions. And that is something we need to reduce. So it's time to act. And it's time to act now,” Knutsen says. “We still need to feed a growing population that's obviously core to our mission. But at the same time, we need to do it in a way that we can decrease the emissions from agriculture.”
The online launch of the program had more than 1,400 attendees from 77 countries.
“We're talking about supporting millions of farmers around the world to change the way they grow food, improve the health of their soils, fight climate change, and earn a new sustainability income,” says Alex Bell, CEO of Agoro Carbon Alliance.
The program will promote “climate positive farming practices” and will include Yara’s agronomic footprint as well as partners in technology and agribusiness.
“This collaboration is to improve the user friendliness of the program, drive down the unpredictability and drive down cost. Overall, it will increase reliability of credits generated,” Bell says. “To create high quality carbon credits to fully incentivize the farmer, there is the need for a long term perspective and long term commitment.”
For Devin Moon, a farmer in eastern Washington state, he says that includes less tillage and more variable-rate fertilizer.
“It’s good not only for the bottom line, but for the soil and the environment,” Moon says.
Anastasia Pavlovic, Managing Director of the Agoro Carbon Alliance in the U.S. says there are three things that set Agoro apart from other programs:
- grower centric program and approach
- an obsession with the quality and rigor that we'll need to keep
- deep agronomic knowledge and longstanding commitment to supporting growers
Agoro will use existing carbon standards, and the leaders say they will announce the companies who have bought credits via Agoro later this summer.