American Ag Today- 11/20/24

And thank you for joining us here for a brand new episode of American Ag today produced by the American Ag network and powered by Farm and Ranch Media. I'm your host Jesse Allen. Great to have you along with us as we share more conversations from the 2024 NAFB convention in Kansas City, Missouri. We had a great time last week in Kansas City for the National Association of Farm Broadcasting Annual Convention.

And right now on the show, we're going to listen into a couple different conversations. We'll hear from Ben Rung with Bayer later on in the program. Let's start though with a conversation I had with Ashley Bruder of Agorro Carbon Alliance here on American Ag today. Ashley, it's good to see you. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you?

I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Always enjoy a chat with our friends at Agorro, and we talked extensively with you guys in the past about Agorro's carbon programs and more. And 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.

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. And 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. And it's been really exciting to work and support these people across the US with these practice changes.

And then ultimately delivering high quality carbon credits, which builds revenue for both farmers and ranchers and for our own company. Absolutely. Well, I know a lot of questions we've talked before about it's kind of the Wild West, at least at the beginning it was trying to figure out this whole carbon picture and 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? Yeah, absolutely. 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 of 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, the local communities themselves, and supporting the longevity of farmers and ranchers, and they really are invested in hearing the stories of the people making these changes on the ground, and they wanna know it's real, they wanna know it's here to stay, and then of course they wanna know how it's going to become a high quality credit, which is usually third party verified in most companies we certainly work with,

the highest quality carbon sort of fires out there? Well, of course, the whole conversation surrounding carbon, you know, 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 that 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 should do that, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And 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.

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.

I'm sure the Agora website, you can head there if folks have questions, want more information or want to reach out for a conversation, right? Yeah, we'd love to talk to anybody with questions at agorocarbon.com. We have a knowledge hub. We have a pretty popular podcast that you can learn from farmers and ranchers, agronomists, industry experts about what's going on. But thank you very much. You bet. Ashley, good to see you. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Once again, Ashley Bruder there with a goral carbon alliance joined us at the NAFB convention last week. Right now, let's hear more about foreground by Bayer. That's Bayer's carbon program. Ben Runge and I had a conversation during trade talk at the NAFB convention. Here is that interview.

Ben Rundj with us from Bayer as we talk carbon here at the NAFB convention. And Ben, just for starters, walk folks through what are some of the ins and outs of the Bayer carbon program? Right, so the Bayer carbon program is a program that's designed to incentivize growers who are adopting or considering adopting practices such as no-till, strip-till,

cover crops and the reason we're doing that is we we we know that these practices you know do a tremendous amount of good for our environment and for the soil for soil health biodiversity water infiltration water carrying capacity nutrient nutrient

nutrient retention. There's a lot of great benefits to these practices and we're trying to create a market-based incentive for growers that can adopt these practices.

Well, I'm thinking about the evolution as everyone kind of tries to figure out the carbon program that's right for them and carbon capture on their farms. And it's been a little bit of the Wild West, but I think we're starting to kind of figure things out, especially with programs like the one from Bayer. Absolutely. You know, there's a lot of different programs out there, but right now you can really kind of bucket it within two generalized areas, right? So you've got practice-based programs,

outcomes-based programs and you know there's good and bad there's pros and cons to both both sides you know an outcomes-based program is a program that pays you based on the soil carbon sequestration so it's a great program in that the there's a lot of opportunity but the bad thing is you may not know what you can take to the bank as a grower with a practice-based program like the Bear Carbon program

You know, you know, if you're doing the practices and we verify them on the farm, then you know exactly what you can take to the bank. If folks want to learn more about the Bayer Carbon Program, what's the best way to do that Ben? Absolutely. Go to BayerForground.com. That's Bayer Foreground F-O-R-G-R-O-U-N-D.com. Awesome. Ben runs with Bayer. Thanks for telling us more about Foreground by Bayer. We appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you.

And once again, Ben runs there with Bayer talked with him during trade talk in Kansas City before that Ashley Bruder with a girl Carmen Alliance. We have a lot more conversations to share from the NAFB convention in Kansas City coming up this week and next week here on American ag today. With that though, we're out of time on this program American ag today powered by farman ranch media produced by the American ag network of Jesse Allen. Have a great rest of your day.