Truterra-Indigo Ag Partnership Designed to Increase Clarity and Adoption of Sustainability Programs
November 19, 2024 Ever since they were introduced a few years ago, carbon solution programs have confused and complicated growers. To combat the confusion, Indigo Ag and Truterra announced a strategic collaboration aimed at simplifying, expanding and accelerating the adoption of ag sustainability solutions.
CropLife recently followed up with executives at Truterra and Indigo Ag to gain further insight about the partnership and what it means for the industry.
“I can’t tell you how exciting it is to finally be able to share the news of this,” says Ewan Lamont, Head of Sustainability, Indigo Ag. “We’ve been sitting on this for a while. It’s been slowly burning a hole in our pocket.”
Lamont has been part of Indigo Ag for about 8 years and is excited about the collaboration.
“I have the privilege now of leading our sustainability solution business, which is primarily our carbon program, our Scope 3 programs, and really other programs that we’re able to pull together based on the science, data, and the technology that we’ve built over years,” he says.
“This move aims to address pain points for companies seeking solutions to reduce ag-based emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere and bring clarity for all participants in this growing market, including farmers,” the companies shared in a press release.
When Indigo Ag introduced its carbon program several years ago, many growers scoffed at the concept.
“When we launched our carbon program in 2019, I recall vividly going out to farms in the Midwest, having conversations with growers, and we’re saying, ‘Yeah, look, we’re going to take this invisible gas from the air, we’re going to put it the soil and we’re going to give a check.’ These guys would be laughing us out of the building,” Lamont says.
The misunderstanding has been replaced by curiosity.
“Fast forward four or five years. There’s not a farmer in the Midwest who doesn’t have an opinion — rightly or wrongly — about carbon programs,” Lamont continues. “Over that time, there’s been this amazing array of carbon programs that have popped up, hung around for a bit and then maybe disappeared. Farming bureaus — even they don’t know who to recommend. It’s confusing for growers; it’s confusing for the industry, it’s confusing for buyers – those people who actually want to buy the outcome of these programs.
“We see opportunity to give some clarity. It’s what we hear from the market,” Lamont says. “How do we know this is real? How do we know this is a stream of revenue for the farm that we can depend upon?”
It’s all about understanding the various options available to growers.
“We really think this is a landmark collaboration in that we’re going to create options for farmers,” says Jamie Leifker, President, Truterra. “I come to this business with 30 years experience in the ag input space, specifically crop protection. And for the last year, I’ve been leading Truterra.
“I think it’s important to call out that I’m also a farmer,” Leifker continues. “And what led me into this business is that we believe that Trutera and other key players in this industry have the opportunity to step up and partner to solve this for farmers and the downstream buyers of the progress that the industry needs to make around the sustainability journey.”
Growers have a lot of questions when it comes to carbon programs, Leifker says those questions include:
- How do I know what program is right for me?
- How do I move from one program to another knowing that I have crop rotations, and I merchandize my grain to multiple entities depending on the market and that defines where my grain is going?
- When is the ideal time for me to make a decision and who is going to guide me down that path?
“Truterra has been very effective at creating a network of retailers to help guide the farmer down that agronomic recommendation,” Leifker says. “What this collaboration means for us is that we’re able to guide them to the right program by working with Indigo to expand the portfolio of program options that farmers have and give them flexibility to move from one program to the next.”
“For the farm, there are clear benefits in moving to sustainable practices around resiliency, around water retention on the fields and for being able to budget for sustainability,” Indigo Ag’s Lamont says. “For sustainability perspective, for planetary impact, agriculture is the most immediate scalable, affordable climate solution. It’s just not moving fast enough.
“The announcement gives us a lot of confidence we’re able to get together with a company such as Truterra and say, ‘We’re in this together.’ If we are really going to get to scale. So that agriculture is on a trajectory to be issuing megatons of carbon credits and producing major emissions reductions, we’ve just got to figure out some of the rules of the road together.”
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