Dive Brief:
- Perdue Farms announced earlier this month it’s launching an environmental board of trade which looks to standardize regenerative agriculture standards for things like insetting scope 3 emissions claims, voluntary carbon credits and clean fuel credit certificates. The board also seeks to boost governance and transparency in the sector to help scale agricultural environmental attributes and bring more credibility to such solutions.
- The initiative was launched with carbon dioxide removal standard-setter and registry Puro.earth, regenerative agriculture company Arva Intelligence and environment-focused geospatial company Millpoint.
- The formation of the board was tied to Puro.earth’s launch of an environmental attributes credits registry, which will initially focus on credits tied to agricultural carbon intensity, according to a Sept. 17 press release. Perdue and Arva are also serving as the first adopters of the nascent registry.
Dive Insight:
The environmental board of trade initiative has been established as a nonprofit 501(c)(6) organization, similar to a business league or trade association, according to the release. Its first priorities will be working to standardize environmental attribute methodologies for scope 3 insetting for agricultural supply chains, certificates necessary for 45Z clean fuel production tax credits or credits rewarded to domestic producers of low-emission transportation and aviation fuels, voluntary carbon credits and credits that certify environmental co-benefit claims.
Currently, it takes the company a long time to close deals that seek to sell carbon credits to its downstream customers, Perdue Farms Director of Sustainability Ben Hildebrand told ESG Dive in an interview. The process requires both parties getting comfortable with a methodology and data sharing expectations, Hildebrand said, but noted that Perdue looks to work with the industry to reach a place where a deal timeline can go from a three-month science review to being completed in two weeks, through the establishment of “a trusted system.”
“Everybody's asking the farmer for data; if it's not us, then it's the next guy, and maybe it's three different companies that are asking the farmer for data,” Hildebrand said. “So, part of it is [that] there's just a lot of inefficiency in how we're getting what we need in order to create value for the farmer off of what they're doing.”
If the industry grows to trust the registry and the EBOT, it will be possible to reduce the frequency of data requests and remove some unnecessary cost, Hildebrand said.
Puro.earth’s environmental attributes registry will run separately from its carbon dioxide removal registry, with an initial focus on credits tied to farmers’ agricultural carbon intensity scores. Puro said its registry will establish carbon intensity scores of agriculture commodities; link it to a defined production quantity, origin site, production period and geospatial records; and keep records of the buyer.
The environmental attribute certificates registry for agricultural products is coming online around the same time as a few related regulations, frameworks and reporting requirements go into effect. The Science Based Targets initiative has its Forest, Land and Agriculture guidance; the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s land sector and removal standard goes into effect Jan. 1, 2027; the 45Z clean fuel credit requires carbon intensity data; the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive has a scope 3 emissions reporting requirement.
Puro.earth President Jan-Willem Bode said in the release that the new registry will apply its existing expertise and infrastructure to a new asset class. Bode said EBOT’s adoption of the registry is a “testament to the rigor and trust Puro.earth brings to the market.”
“As crop producers and buyers come under pressure from climate risks and regulatory scrutiny, the new Registry helps them lower their carbon intensity, prove it and be rewarded for it, while building healthier soil and more resilient supply chains,” Bode said.
Scott Raubenstine, vice president of agricultural services at Perdue Agribusiness — a division of Perdue that focuses on agricultural commodities and animal nutrition products — said that the EBOT looks to “spin the flywheel of scaling” and help expand regenerative agriculture practices the company seeks to implement on farms in its own supply chain for decarbonization.
“These farmers have been doing vital work in terms of producing food for the world, and we really feel that we have an opportunity here to create an infrastructure that standardizes the methodologies [and] builds trust and integrity in the assets that we can generate from these farming practices,” Raubenstine said in an interview.
