Transcript provided by Kensho.

Lindsey Hall: Hi. I'm Lindsey Hall, Head of Thought Leadership at S&P Global Sustainable1.

Esther Whieldon: And I'm Esther Whieldon, a Senior Writer on the Sustainable1 Thought Leadership team.

Lindsey Hall: Welcome to ESG Insider, an S&P Global podcast, where Esther and I take you inside the environmental, social and governance issues that are shaping the rapidly evolving sustainability landscape.

Esther Whieldon: Lindsey, it's hard to believe spring is just a couple of weeks away  That means very soon I'll be planting lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and other crops in my garden. Just today, in fact, I noticed my daffodils are already starting to open. 

Lindsey Hall: Yeah, this could be the year when I finally find my green thumb. I still need to plant those tomato seeds you sent me for my birthday last year. With spring and the promise of fresh fruit and vegetables, this is also a good opportunity to talk about the big challenges climate change is posing to global food supply chains and agricultural production. This is something we’ve heard in multiple episodes this year. At the same time, the world's population is projected to grow, which means more food will be needed. 

This is a rising topic of the global sustainability stage. For example, COP28, the UN’s 2023 climate conference, resulted in heads of state and government from nearly 160 countries signing a declaration on sustainable agriculture, resilient food systems and climate action. 

Esther Whieldon: So in today's episode, we're looking at the sustainability landscape for agriculture.

We'll learn about sustainable agriculture trends from Michelle French, Director of Global Sustainability Programs at commodities agriculture company ADM. Michelle describes the challenges of tracking emissions associated with farming, the benefits of regenerative agriculture and how ADM is working with farmers and suppliers to solve technical challenges of tracking their emissions, knowing what practices might work best for their location, and financing changes the farmers make to become more sustainable but that may take years before they become profitable.

Also in this episode, we'll explore a farming technology that reduces land and water use while also helping address food insecurity. And lastly we'll learn how STEM programs can transform youth academically as well as their relationship to food.

Let's start off with Michelle of ADM who I sat down with on the sidelines of the GreenBiz conference in Phoenix last month. Michelle begins by describing what ADM does and then defines that term I mentioned earlier, "regenerative agriculture". Here she is.

Michelle French: ADM is a large multinational commodities agriculture company. So we are based on corn, soy, wheat, canola, we transform those into all kinds of different usable ingredients for downstream customers. We're a business-to-business company. So most people have never heard of ADM, but we make everything from ethanol to corn syrup to starch that goes into construction materials, plant-based plastic polymers and then, of course, food that is eaten, animal feed. And those are our legacy businesses. We do have a nutrition business unit as well that focuses on human nutrition and animal nutrition.  

Esther Whieldon: For listeners who may not be familiar with, what is regenerative agriculture?

Michelle French: So the basics, when you look at regenerative agriculture is that we're regenerative. It's really focusing on rebuilding the soil oil. And what we do for regenerative agriculture is we take a look at the different practices. So when people talk about implementing regenerative agriculture, they're really talking about implementing a suite of practices that are designed and that focus on rebuilding the soil health.

Esther Whieldon: Michelle went on to say that the agriculture industry is waiting for the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to finalize its 2022 draft guidance on how companies should account for and report emissions and activities that remove emissions from the atmosphere. For example, how should they account for their Scope 3 indirect emissions that occur in their supply chains? The GHG Protocol is expected to finalize that Land and Sector Removals guidance this year. Here's Michelle explaining why this guidance matters.

Michelle French: Everybody wants to know how do I account for carbon at the field level? How do I have confidence that this is going to be right. We want to get started. We want to start a project now. We want to start working with farmers, but how do we do that with all of this uncertainty. 

And so I think that's another challenge where we just have to figure out what are the pieces that will change so drastically in this draft guidance that it would completely derail a project versus at least let's go out and start talking with growers. Let's start seeing what they're doing at the farm. Let's lay the foundation and the groundwork. And then if we have to tweak this emission factor or that specification, we can. But at least we have the groundwork laid. 

One other piece that I would throw in there is this focus on carbon. Right now, there's this "well, I want to see what the carbon intensity is, I want to know the carbon score, what's my Scope 3." I think the challenge in that is when we look at solutions like regenerative agriculture, it's not that it's opposed. It's just that the picture is so much bigger. There's just such a broad story. It's so much more we can tell, and it does a real disservice if we only talk about the carbon piece.

Esther Whieldon: Michelle explained that regenerative agriculture can also provide soil health benefits and reduce the amount of soil that blows away in the wind or is eroded by water. It can also help store many of the important minerals and elements in the soil that plants need to grow. And regenerative agriculture can also provide a natural defense against pests.

You'll hear Michelle mention practices such as reduced tilling or no-till. This matters because every time the soil is disturbed, it can release some carbon dioxide. So reducing how many times a farmer tills the soil, lowers those emissions. 

Michelle also mentions cover crops. 

Lindsey Hall: Ok. Cover crops? That's a new term for me -- what does that mean.

Esther Whieldon: So farmers typically have a growing season that usually starts in the spring and ends in the fall with the first frost. And you'll see them clearing the fields between crops. The problem is the soil is a living thing and when it is left bare for months and exposed to the sun and wind and rain, that can really affect soil quality and health. 

So instead of tilling up the soil and leaving the fields empty over the winter, farmers will plant cover crops that grow during the off season to help maintain soil health. 

But because some of these practices change how the farm fields look throughout the year, Michelle said one big obstacle to farms adopting these practices is how local communities might react.

Michelle French: We still have a lot of the social aspect of farming that we're still trying to get over. I know a lot of growers that I've talked to kind of get judged by their neighbors when they switch to no-til because there's stubble left in the field. They plant to a cover crop and instead of having this nice like tilled up, churn earth that just has that fresh black soil that's ready to go for next year. There's corn stubble and green things growing out of it, and it just looks a mess and say, what are you doing? Why aren't you taking care of your land? And so that's another big part of this is overcoming some of that social stigma almost of these different practices. So doing something different, of course, you're going to stand out. 

Esther Whieldon: Michelle went on to explain how ADM is helping farmers transition to sustainable agriculture practices. 

Michelle French: So the programs that we've been implementing are 3 components. We have the technical assistance component. So every grower that engages with us, we hook them up with a conservation-minded agronomist partner. B cause I've never met a single grower who wants Michelle French to come and tell them how to farm their ground. They don't want to hear it from me. They don't want to hear it from ADM. They would like to have somebody that they have confidence in somebody who knows their area. 

So we have different technical assistance providers that are regionally based that can talk to growers about some of these practices, help them choose which practices fit their operations best. And so instead of it being "You have to do this practice that may not make sense for their farm," it's really more of a collaborative conversation. So technical assistance is #1. 

Number two is the data piece. When we first started doing this, it would be, on average, depending on the size of the farm, anywhere from 4 to 8 hours to enter the amount of data that's required to get a greenhouse gas footprint that I could use in my Scope 3 inventory. 

That doesn't fly that we cannot hit any kind of scale when it takes that. So we have partnered with Farmers Business Network, FBN, and they're a data provider in the U.S. They are able to integrate through API connections. So growers who have My John Deere, for example, a couple of the other programs, they can import and really cut down on that time to enter data. They also provide services of either helping to enter data or they can be as hands on or hands off as the farmer is comfortable with. 

We have some of our growers who have said, "yeah, it takes about 45 minutes and then I'm done." That is a huge time saving. When you look at time is money and everything around that, that has been a huge unlock because if we can make this less painful, that's really what is needed from the farm side. 

So the technical assistance piece, the data assistance piece and then the third piece, of course, is the financial assistance piece. And when we take a look at the major cost when you're talking about regenerative practices, oftentimes, it's going to be the cover crop seed. So you have to pay for additional seed.  There are additional steps. There's a lot of timing, but there's a lot of risk. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, especially if it's year 1. 

So for example, I had a grower who did a panel with me here at GreenBiz last year, and he said the first time he tried to do cover crops. They had a really wet spring. And so he wasn't able to get into the field to terminate the cover crop. So his corn grew up through it, and he had aflatoxins and molds, and it just, it picked up everything as it grew up through that cover crop. He said it was an absolute disaster. His yields suffered. It was terrible. The silver lining is that he didn't get discouraged and he tried it again the next year and had a much better outcome. But when we look at the financial incentives, we're not paying the full cost here. 

What we're doing is acknowledging to the farmer, you're facing risk. We want to go on this journey with you. From everything that we've seen in both academia and in word of mouth, it takes about 3 to 5 years for cover crops to become profitable on their own right. 

When you see those yield improvements. When you see that resiliency. We had a grower in Iowa, who was one of our first, this has been several years ago now, but he was in his field 2 weeks before any of his neighbors. And they were like, what are you doing? What is so different? They were all flooded out. And he said, these cover crops are really starting to work. My fields are draining. This is awesome. And then did more recruitment for cover crops than anything we could have said. It's really that word-of-mouth piece.  But it did -- he had been doing them for several years until he got that soil rebuilt to the point that it was draining much like a natural soil would. 

So all of our participants, 100% are paid a direct financial incentive. So whether it's dollars per acre or cents per bushel, we are paying based on the practice, based on the geography, what program it goes into. We give them a couple of different options, but it is a direct financial incentive that is paid to the grower that they can use to offset the cover crop, seed cost or offset some of the different timing challenges? 

Esther Whieldon: So we heard how certain regenerative agriculture practices take years to become profitable and how ADM is working to help offset the adoption costs and provide technical assistance to farmers as well. 

Earlier this year on the podcast, we heard from some of the authors of the US Fifth National Climate Assessment about how climate change is making it harder to grow food particularly as summers get hotter and some regions get drier. And why that matters is some plants just won't grow in extreme heat. Linsdey, for example, I learned that tomatoes may stop producing fruit when temperatures get too high. And we also heard how climate change will drive increased food insecurity particularly for low-income and minority populations. 

Well, our next two guests have been working to solve these issues using a technology known as aeroponic vertical gardening. While I was at GreenBiz in Phoenix, last month I went on a conference field trip to an aeroponic vertical farm called True Garden. I 's run by Troy Albright.  

Specifically, the farm uses vertical gardening structures instead of soil in the ground to grow plants . And they grow the plants in these tall vertical white tubes that have holes cut out for the plants to grow out of. As I walked around the garden I could  hear the water cycling through the different rows.

And if you were driving by the farm, you probably wouldn't know it was there. That's because it's in the back of a converted former bank branch office in a small strip mall along a busy main road. Troy also installed 100 solar panels on his facility to offset his energy-use related emissions. He grows everything from lettuce and herbs to tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.

I sat down with Troy in his greenhouse surrounded by rows and rows of these Tower Garden structures to learn more.

All right. So we're in this beautiful greenhouse. Tell me what I'm looking at here. 

Troy Albright: You're looking at a vertical aeroponic farm, which is a subset of hydroponics. So hydroponics, you have plants that are growing in water all the time. So the roots are hanging in water all the time. So you have to pump oxygen into the water, CO2, you have to really manage your water nutrient level. And otherwise, you get plant disease. Well, with the Tower Garden technology, these plants, these roots are hanging in air so they get hyperoxeneted, and they grow 3 to 4x faster because they're not just in water. It's really something. So and again, it's a great way to grow. We can have a head of lettuce in 21 to 26 days from a 2- to 3-inch seedling.

Esther Whieldon: And that's compared to like what normal for in soil?

Troy Albright: In soil, 35 to 40 days. By going vertical, we can grow 10x more food in the same square footage. So this greenhouse is a 5,000 square foot greenhouse. So it's about 1/9 of an acre, and I can grow easily an acre of food here. So I use 90% less land. 

And then since it's hydroponics called aeroponics, I use 95% to 98% less water. And by using that amount of water or less water, we can really conserve our natural resources.

So even here in Arizona, water is a commodity. If we look at some of our dams like Hoover Dam up there, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, they're all at all-time lows. So if we don't have water, we can't grow food. This is part of that solution. I'm not saying this is the only solution. I'm not saying you can't grow in soil. This is something in addition to doing that. 

And then as we see climate changing around the world, again, this is another solution because mother nature is very powerful. I mean, when I was lived in Minnesota and we were farmers there, we're always battling mother nature. Too much rain, no rain, I mean it's just this whole thing too cold, too hot. I mean in a greenhouse like this, you can control your environment. It's environmentally controlled or even if people in their own house, they're heating it and calling it. So essentially, you've got a greenhouse in your own house. So growing your own food with a tower system like this makes it really easy. 

So as we look at the challenges of the world and as the population keeps increasing, the goal is how we're going to feed our people. So even here in the United States, if we can show people how to grow their own food, especially if we start with kids and schools, if they start growing that lettuce, they will be more willing to eat that lettuce.

Esther Whieldon: Talk to me about who you work with and what countries? Like what's the business model here? 

Troy Albright: All right. So let's start out to work just feeding the community. We service a lot of food banks. We work with schools. So we have our USDA GIP Gap certification. So that allows us to work with schools and sell them produce. 

We also work with restaurants. There's a big co-op here in Arizona called Sun Produce, and they gather up all the local farmers that want to participate and be part of that. So that's another excellent way to be part of that community. But it's expanded to not only Arizona, but we're putting farms in U.K., in Jamaica, Spain, Abi Dhabi, Qatar, Saudi Arabia.

Food is an issue worldwide. So we're putting towers all over Northern Canada. We've got some big projects there as well. We're trying to really get these towers into their communities to feed the people. So this greenhouse can be built anywhere in the world with a few modifications. 

Esther Whieldon: Now by the way, I recorded some of my conversation with Troy on camera and there was this moment where he pulls a big head of lettuce out of one of the towers with the bare roots dangling down almost like octopus tentacles. We're going to post a video clip of that moment and include a link in our show notes once it's available.

Earlier we heard Troy mentioned the importance of empowering people to grow their own food. Our next guest, Stephen Ritz, uses the same Tower Garden Aeroponic technology as Troy, but it's scaled down for residential use with LED grow lights added. 

He uses the technology as part of a curriculum his organization, The Green Bronx Machine, create to teach kids in elementary schools in cities like the Bronx New York how to grow their own food. Stephen, who founded the Green Bronx Machine, starts by describing how the organization started by working with high schoolers.

Stephen Ritz: Green Bronx Machine is a locally grown nonprofit that specializes in the art and science of growing vegetables aligned to whole school performance indicators. I'd like to say we grow vegetables, our vegetables grow children and our children grow high-performing schools and happy, healthy communities. 

We started many, many years ago as an after-school program as a workforce development program for overage, under-credited children, youth who are coming in and out of prison who had very low reading scores, very low. The statistics were every 6 months, they'd be in and out of prison. And literally, I was tested with teaching these young men and young women something. They sent them to me at School I was the Dean of students at Walton Highschool, which had a 17% graduation rate. 

Many of my kids, the one thing that does tie them all together is food and security, food issues and economics. So everybody knows someone who's hungry. So we decided we're going to start learning how to grow food and donate it to those in need, and particularly in a local soup kitchen, proximate to the school committee of my kids were familiar with. But when Whole Foods gave us the opportunity to sell our produce there, it was game on.

 At that time, there was not support for career technical education the way there was. It was being dismantled left and right. It was really about test scores, testing and testing and test prep. And I'd say, "Wait a minute, I can use this to get kids really excited." So I decided I was going to build a program with school metrics, designed around school metrics, that just put the garden in the middle. So I wanted something that kids given a teachers could manage, but principles loved. 

And the rest is history. Those kids went on to the White House, my first class and $3 million in scholarship money, little kids who came through the program. I have kids who are now nutritionists, instead of wanting to be the athletes and the dancers and the rap stars, realize there's better longevity in being a nutritionist, the culinary. The whole fresh food movement really created an awareness about fresh food. 

And the ability to teach kids where food comes from, what it looks like, and get them excited about. It is remarkable. Believe it or not, our humble little organization now has 825 interconnected schools across the country. We touch 275,000 students a day. We've trained over 10,000 teachers. We've, and this is the most important thing, e've democratized access to curriculum, professional development and training. 

Esther Whieldon: Stephen went on to explain how teaching kids to grow food also helps them both reduce their climate impacts, but also understand how to be more sustainable in general. 

Stephen Ritz: But what I'm really excited about doing is growing the next generation of connected teachers, empowered communities and children who love growing and eating vegetables. 

This relates to climate change in a zillion ways. First of all, I'm growing food with 95% less water in 95% less space, in communities that have limited means and access to it. When my children found out that it takes 400 gallons of water basically to get a quarter-pound hamburger for $0.99 and my entire farm in school uses 400 gallons of water to grow enough food to feed the entire cafeteria on our School Garden to Cafe Day, they get really excited. 

And how else does that translate? Well, they shut off the water when they're brushing their teeth. They understand that the water and the fire hydrants is the same water that actually waters their plants. 

And again, I'm technology agnostic. When you think about the fact that the world is increasingly more crowded, hungry and resource depleted, the ability to grow copious amounts of food, hyper-locally hyperconnected, makes a great deal of dollars and a great deal of defense. 

Food justice is racial justice and who has access to what, where, when and how it determines everything. And traditionally, my kids are not invited to the table. They're giving scraps. So we are building our own table. We're connecting our own communities, and we're growing something greater. 

And then, there's just a miracle of putting a seed in the child's hand. Because when you put a seed in the child's hand, you're making them a promise. You're making a promise that, that seed, just like them, has the ability to grow into something great if you take good care of it. 

Esther Whieldon: So today, we've explored some of the ways the agricultural landscape is changing to become more sustainable from the business scale down to educating youth. 

Lindsey Hall: This really is a topic that impacts so many stakeholders from the many industries that rely on farms to financial institutions needed to finance solutions down to the individual consumer who can take steps in their own home. 

Esther Whieldon: Please stay tuned as we continue to track how agriculture and other sectors are working on the low carbon transition. 

Lindsey Hall: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ESG Insider. If you like what you heard today, please subscribe, share and leave us a review wherever you get your podcast.

Esther Whieldon: And a special thanks to our agency partner, The 199. See you next time.

Copyright ©2024 by S&P Global  

This piece was published by S&P Global Sustainable1, a part of S&P Global.     

DISCLAIMER  

By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty, guarantee, or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in this Podcast. The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice. Unless specifically stated otherwise, S&P GLOBAL does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this Podcast, and information from this Podcast should not be referenced in any way to imply such approval or endorsement. The third party materials or content of any third party site referenced in this Podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions, standards or policies of S&P GLOBAL. S&P GLOBAL assumes no responsibility or liability for the accuracy or completeness of the content contained in third party materials or on third party sites referenced in this Podcast or the compliance with applicable laws of such materials and/or links referenced herein. Moreover, S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty that this Podcast, or the server that makes it available, is free of viruses, worms, or other elements or codes that manifest contaminating or destructive properties.  

S&P GLOBAL EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY INDIVIDUAL'S USE OF, REFERENCE TO, RELIANCE ON, OR INABILITY TO USE, THIS PODCAST OR THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THIS PODCAST.