RUBIZMO Café Talk Cycle #05-1 - What is carbon neutrality in agriculture?
Channel: Rubizmo Rural Business Models
Date: 2021-06-01

This Café Talk session gives a profound insight in what carbon neutrality in agriculture means and what opportunities it provides. Camille Poutrin and Bruna Molinaro from GreenFlex, France – a company with the ambition to integrate global environmental and social value creation to their customers´ activities – are presenting this highly active topic!

The session was part of the fifth live RUBIZMO Café Talk Cycle taking part in April 2021. Follow the Playlist "RUBIZMO Café Talks" and discover even more opportunities for rural development. 

After the 15min. presentation the lecturers were answering all questions of the audience. For more insights, read the following Q&A: 

Q: Regarding agroforestry and the Paris agreement, was exactly does the initiative of “4 for 1000”. mean? 
A: It´s a concept to higher of 0,4 % de carbone storage every year. In agriculture you can store a lot of carbon. For example, in having more biomass on site. You can let straws, you can have a more like a compost, this kind of thing. More or less, you can say that carbon is everywhere on life matter. So, agriculture really has to play a role on that. And when changing your practices, you can throw a lot of carbon. 

Q: Is it possible to achieve carbon neutrality without a significant reduction in output and production. 
A: I would say no. It would be impossible to achieve carbon neutrality in consuming in the same way that we are. We have to develop the circular economy or the economy of cooperation, trying to use again and again and again the same materials and not produce and produce and produce. We have to be ecofriendly and think about our consumption, for example, to say, OK, do I need this plastic? We need energy to produce it, we need an industry for that, you have to manage the production, you have to manage the waste. All of that is carbon emission and we don't need it. So, it's about finding new solutions to reduce all this useless habit.

Q: Is there a move towards the carbon neutrality like regenerative farming? 
A: More and more. Nowadays, you can have credits by modifying some agricultural practices. To sump up, you can have money because you store carbon. So more and more farmers try to move on the carbon credits. 

Q: Are there systems where you can buy credits directly to a farmer, you know, working with regenerative farming to “compensate”, does that already exist?
A: Yes, there is! Some of our clients are now working to try to find a good project. But we were surprised: there is a lot of projects about forestry and not so many about agriculture. For example, there is a concept of low carbon credits in France, so you can propose a methodology depending on your practices. There is a methodology about crops but not with fruits, vegetables. And the concept is to pay the farmer for carbone storage practices. So that's quite interesting. A company is paying more or less 40 euros per ton of carbon. Ideally this would help for investment, but if a few studies also show that it would increase the productivity on the long term as well would be great! 

Q: And the question I have is actually on the carbon neutral definition and how the companies can claim. We talked about regulation and I wonder who is monitoring those claims. 
A: In France we have one kind of position developed by the Environmental Energy Agency. There isn't any labels. For the GreenHouse Gas analyses, the companies decide in which scope they want to be carbon neutral. And they only show what they´ve calculated. For example, they emit one hundred thousand tons per year, and then decided to plant trees and start to compensate these one hundred thousand tons, trying to be the most transparent as possible. 

Q: So there is a high risk that a lot of companies claim affirmation without 100 % proofs or without any measurement? 
A: Yes, they try to be transparent so everybody can see what they are doing. 

Q: Is there carbon credits in all countries ?
A: Countries are trying to do this to allow their companies to offset their emissions in their own country. So it's something they can do to try to help themselves being carbon neutral (European countries are engaged to do this and they have to prove that there will really be a carbon sink). I don't know why other countries are not doing this … maybe because it's expensive, takes time and energy. But I think maybe one day all countries will have it.

Q: Is there any price monitoring mechanism in the market? I mean, who sets the price?
A: Normally the price is set project by project in Europe. It's very much more expensive than in other part in the word because here the salaries are more expensive and the solutions are complex. So they say a price that the farmer needs to be remunerated in order to do this. And then that's the price that they will be charging the companies with a little margin for the other intermediates.