Earth Protect Blog

By Julie Creswell

© The New York Times Co.

Driving rain pelted the windows of “the Tower,” a second-story glass enclosure in Ray Gaesser’s home that provides a view for miles of the gentle, rolling fields around Corning, Iowa. Inside, away from the elements, Gaesser pondered what the coming year might bring for farmers.

As tractors and planters throughout the Midwest rolled into fields like the ones near his house earlier this year, Gaesser, 69, was hopeful that soaring grain prices and heightened global demand for food would translate into robust revenues. But he also expected that sharply higher costs for fuel, fertilizer and other necessities would cut deeply into profits.

And then there is Big Food.

Companies like PepsiCo, Cargill, Walmart and General Mills are trying to persuade farmers like Gaesser to adopt new climate-friendly agricultural techniques through a variety of financial incentives and programs. They have good reason. Together, these companies have pledged that at least 70 million acres, or roughly 18% of the nation’s total cropland, an area about the size of Nevada, will be operated using regenerative agriculture techniques by 2030.

Through photosynthesis, plants — whether corn or trees — con-

vert carbon dioxide from the air into energy that is stored in the soil. Regenerative farming techniques, such as planting a cover crop during the fall, allows that process to continue throughout the winter months when the soil would normally be bare.

But there are several complicating factors. The programs sponsored by the companies, which run from cost-sharing agreements with farmers to guarantees to cover any declines in yields to complex, multiyear contracts to pay for carbon dioxide that is captured and held in the soil, are largely still in pilot stages and amount to a fraction of the companies’ overall goals. And many farmers remain skeptical of the initiatives, arguing that the incentives being offered simply are not enough to cover the additional costs these new techniques will incur.

“What is it worth to them for us to farm differently?” Gaesser asked.

Gaesser embodies many of the competing forces in the farming industry. A Republican who advised former President Donald Trump on agricultural issues, Gaesser is also a vocal proponent of climatefriendly farming methods and uses several across the 5,400 acres he farms with his son. But he does not believe that farmers should foot the bill for overhauling decades-long practices.

“There has to be value, or opportunity, throughout the whole food chain,” he said. “Are customers willing to pay more for food that is farmed in a climatefriendly manner?”

The global food system, which accounts for a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, is under pressure from consumers and investors to create tangible plans to reduce that output. At the same time, they are undertaking other initiatives, like eliminating plastic in packaging and reducing water usage, to make their products more sustainable.

But attempts to achieve those climate goals come at a tenuous time for the global food system. The pandemic, supply-chain breakdowns and the war in Ukraine, one of six major breadbaskets of the world, has food companies scrambling — and paying higher prices — for the grains necessary for the bulk of the food they produce.

The current agricultural system is not “flexible enough to rapidly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions,” said Hannah Birgé, a senior scientist of food and water for the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit that has teamed with corporations to meet sustainability goals. “It’s not working for the farmer, not working for the supply chain and not working for the consumer.”

But who should ultimately bear the costs for food grown in a more sustainable manner — farmers, corporations, consumers or the government through federal programs — is not the only question swirling around regenerative agriculture.

Interviews with academics, nonprofit organizations, corporations and farmers indicate there is no standard definition of what constitutes regenerative agriculture. And practices that work on one piece of land may not work on another.

But perhaps the biggest barrier is farmers themselves, with their age, experience, culture and politics presenting challenges. For decades, the average age of farmers in the United States has been creeping higher; in 2017, it was nearly 58. Experts say that persuading farmers to give up years-long techniques for newer approaches is a difficult task.

“A new risk”

After maneuvering through the pandemic, labor shortages and then various supply-chain scarcities for key ingredients, Big Food in recent months has had to contend with a new challenge: inflation.

Companies have already raised the prices of cereals, chips and cookies to cover the increased costs for the corn, soybeans and wheat that help make them.

Now, as they consider ways to achieve their sustainability goals, little is said about paying an even higher price for sustainably grown crops. Some pointed to a survey released earlier this year by the International Food Information Council, a nonprofit that is financed by the food and beverage industry, that found the majority of consumers were not willing to pay more for food grown using regenerative agriculture techniques. Instead, much of the focus centers on convincing farmers that the regenerative agriculture practices will pay for themselves over time.

Last year, food and beverage giant PepsiCo set an ambitious goal. By 2030, 7 million acres — its entire global farming footprint — would use regenerative agriculture techniques. To accomplish that, PepsiCo, which had $7.6 billion in profits last year, made an offer to share in the costs of some pilot programs. If the farmers adopted climatefriendly techniques on a few acres of their farmland, PepsiCo would pay them $10 to $40 an acre for a year. In the first year, PepsiCo enrolled 345,000 acres in various programs and believes there could be an “exponential curve” in growth in the coming years.

“We believe there is a period of time where farmers need a bridge to get through the process,” said Jim Andrew, PepsiCo’s chief sustainability officer. “What we have found is they try it, and then, in the second year, they dramatically expand the square footage using the techniques because they see the benefits.”

Last year, a nonprofit called the Soil Health Institute conducted and Cargill funded a study that looked at 100 farms that used regenerative agricultural techniques. It found that 67% of them reported higher yields, producing more corn or soybeans. In addition, costs dropped and incomes surged.

But others say that changing the composition of the soil can take years and requires consistent effort, and that it was still an open question whether this type of farming is financially beneficial for farmers.

Asking farmers to reverse decades of practice and take on, in some cases, new expense and potential risks with regenerative farming has been a tough sell.

Part of the reason that adoption of cover crops has been slower is cost.

Academics from Ohio State University and the University of Illinois estimated earlier this year that it cost $37 an acre in seed, equipment cost and labor to plant a cover crop each year.

For a 300-acre farm in Iowa, that’s an additional $11,000 in costs each year, and experts say inflation has probably driven prices even higher.

But time is also a factor. “We’re planting a cover crop at the same time we’re trying to harvest a primary crop that is our paycheck for the next 12 months,” said Nathan Anderson, a board member of the Practical Farmers of Iowa, a nonprofit organization that works with farmers and corporations to move to more climate-friendly operations. “That’s a new risk.”

Seeing gold in carbon dioxide

These days, the latest gold rush is found in the Midwest. There, amid the dark, crumbly soil, food companies and others say lies a new product — and revenue stream — for farmers: carbon.

Last year, Cargill began offering farmers $20 for every metric ton of carbon dioxide they were able to sequester, or coax from the atmosphere and into the soil, in their fields through regenerative farming techniques.

Cargill, which is privately held, set a target two years ago that 10 million acres of land in North America would be farmed sustainably by 2030. Cargill said it has 360,000 acres so far involved in a variety of regenerative agriculture programs.

For Cargill, that carbon can be counted as part of its greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.

Other groups are selling the carbon credits. Last year, Microsoft, which has a goal to be carbon negative by 2030, paid $2 million, or $20 a metric ton, for carbon that was sequestered in land farmed by members of the Land O’Lakes agricultural cooperative and some independent farmers to offset its own greenhouse gas emissions.

But many farmers say the prices they are being offered are too low.

Ray Gaesser and his son Chris in Corning gave up on a carbon sequestration project when it asked for proof that they had not tilled the land for a period of time.

“How do I prove that?” Chris Gaesser, 36, who returned to the farm after graduating from Iowa State University with a degree in agronomy, asked with a laugh. “Show you a picture of the tractor in the shed?”