Agricultural Decarbonization Achieving Climate-Smart Food Production and Justice40 Goals

Agricultural practices are a major driver of climate change, contributing globally 19–29% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the costs to small and mid-size farms to engage in and produce climate-smart farming practices and consumer-branded products are out of reach, in terms of time and money. The adoption of circular smart agriculture provides a pathway to combat the unsustainability of global food production and promote agricultural decarbonization. This project will focus on establishing a scalable climate-smart circular agricultural model to manage the production of carbon credits on farms using biochar to improve soil health, crop yields, and develop markets for climate-smart products to consumers. The Phase I effort is directed towards activities needed to demonstrate feasibility of an economic model and digital infrastructure for these purposes by collecting end-user/community feedback and converting the collected requirements into system design requirements that are needed for the farmers and producers to decarbonize on-farm operations while producing new revenue streams. The R&D will enable consumers to drive decarbonization with consumption patterns of climate smart food products and enable community-driven stakeholders to drive decarbonization for underserved/disadvantaged communities in line with the Justice40 Initiative. The product we aim to develop is a climate-smart circular agriculture system to reduce carbon emissions and balance it across the production lifecycle with a managed carbon credit licensing approach using scientific aims and business economics that support traceability, verification, and trust. The goal is to prove that a deployable incentive system that enables smart and efficient achievement of Justice40 Initiative goals is possible, in ways that are actionable, measurable, verifiable, and transparent. Our smart digital infrastructure enables new, marketable, and scalable ways for communities to tailor benefits to specifics needs of end-users and stakeholder programs. Our technological approach, when fully commercialized in Phases I-III+, is expected to reduce emissions by at least 0.5 gigaton carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) by 2030 and 5 GT CO2e by 2040.