News & Analysis

Briefing: AgriCapture enrols 20,000 acres to ‘carbon-neutral rice’ program

Taking into account emissions from transportation, post-harvest production, on-farm activity and inputs, the company says its rice will still be carbon neutral.

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Agtech company AgriCapture is working with farmers in the US on more than 20,000 acres of farmland to produce ‘carbon-neutral rice.’

Farms will follow a regenerative farming program to tackle the crop’s annual contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, which is estimated at 10 percent of global methane emissions, according to the World Bank.

No-GHG rice? But what about the supply chain?

AgriCapture claim to have “a full cradle-to-gate life cycle analysis approach to quantify net GHG emissions,” of the full rice supply chain they will plug into.

Taking into account emissions from transportation, post-harvest production, on-farm activity and inputs, the company says its rice will still be carbon neutral.

Said AgriCapture in a statement: “AgriCapture takes a full cradle-to-gate life cycle analysis approach to quantify net GHG emissions. The GHG emissions associated with farming inputs, on-farm activity, post-harvest production, and transportation are all quantified by AgriCapture.”

The agtech company says it’s program “is expected to reduce over 100,000 metric tons of GHGs each year, starting in 2022.”

Regenerative ag interest

Regenerative farming practices continue to remain a highly topical talking point in the industry, with AXA, Unilever and Tikehau Capital signing a memorandum of understating in May to launch a €1 billion regenerative agriculture impact fund.

The trio have a mandate to go after the enabling process in geographies including the US, LatAm, Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia, as more and more stakeholders join the movement to transition conventional farms to regenerative.

Regenerative farming involves practices such as no-till farming, cover-cropping, and the introduction of wildlife, among many other ecosystem-building methods of farming, which enhance biodiversity and enable plants to capture more carbon from the environment.

The use of such practices is integral to all the major carbon credit-generating methodologies.