Category: Food_Ag_CN FOOD_CN NEWS_ARCHIVE PATA_Climate_Change_Food_2022_related

The industrialization of agriculture in the last century boosted production around the world – but that success also made our food systems much more vulnerable to the growing climate crisis.

Last week, Soilworks portfolio company Grassroots Carbon announced its first tranche of rancher payments for delivered soil carbon credits, the first of its kind for delivered credits to ranchers (various groups have provided transition finance of some sort with expected carbon credit outcomes.) While the quality of soil carbon credits and the increasing prominence in carbon credit buyer portfolios have been previously discussed by us here at The Regeneration Weekly, we must endeavor to understand how putting cash in ranchers’ pockets changes the attractiveness of the profession – and incentivizes a shift to regenerative practices on each ranch.

The U.S. is the world leader in biofuel production—generating 47 percent of global output over the last decade. The ten-fold expansion in ethanol production in the U.S. from 2002 to 2019 has been driven by the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a federal program that since 2005 has required transportation fuel to contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels. So far, that has largely meant corn ethanol. Currently 98 percent of gasoline in the U.S. contains some ethanol, most commonly 10 percent, or E10.

The future of our food is not looking so hot thanks to the prevalence of monoculture agriculture. What is a monoculture you ask? Simply put a monoculture is a single crop repeatedly grown on the same land. Major crops that are grown as a monoculture are usually grains (i.e. corn, wheat or rice), forage (alfalfa or clover), or fiber (cotton). The combined cropland in the United States covers a whopping 253.7 million acres!

Perhaps one of the broadest areas of consensus in regenerative circles is the philosophy of viewing “food as medicine.” One particular trend under scrutiny with this paradigm is the meteoric rise of vegetable oil consumption over the past sixty years (in this context, we are defining these as oils extracted from seeds, grains, and legumes like soybean oil, canola/rapeseed oil, corn oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, cottonseed oil, and others.)

The food and agriculture sectors are on the precipice of a fundamental shift that shows many of the hallmarks of the change that software and computer infrastructure started going through 15 years ago.

Veganuary, a campaign that started in the U.K. to get people to give up meat and dairy for the month, is in its third year in the U.S., where it's catching on slowly.

In July, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy to create a fairer, more resilient, and more dynamic economy. Over the last few decades, we’ve seen too many industries become dominated by a handful of large companies that control most of the business and most of the opportunities—raising prices and decreasing options for American families, while also squeezing out small businesses and entrepreneurs.

The U.S. agriculture sector extends beyond the farm business to include a range of farm-related industries. The largest of these are food service and food manufacturing. Americans’ expenditures on food amount to 13 percent of household budgets on average. Among Federal Government outlays on farm and food programs, nutrition assistance far outpaces other programs.

As with most things related to people, the food we eat comes with a carbon cost. Soil tillage, crop and livestock transportation, manure management and all the other aspects of global food production generate greenhouse gas emissions to the tune of more than 17 billion metric tons per year, according to a new study published on Monday in Nature Food. Animal-based foods account for 57 percent of those emissions, and plant-based ones make up 29 percent.