Wilmington-based Corteva Agriscience announced a $500,000 commitment in creating the Corteva Agriscience Climate Positive Challenge as a way to offset carbon emissions in a way that sustains farmers.
The challenge grants will provide financial rewards to farmers who are already advancing “innovative climate-positive practices for collaborating with local environmental groups, universities, growers or others, ” a release stated. The goal is to help scale up those practices.
“We understand the challenges farmers around the world are facing as it relates to trade, policy and weather challenges,” said James C. Collins, Jr., CEO of Corteva. “These reasons are our primary drivers for announcing this now – to provide incentives for those farmers that have a keen eye for scaling their practices.”
Collins introduced the concept at last year’s World Food Prize.
Since then, the company held meetings with farmers and organizations representing agriculture and food production. The discussions explored what it would take to create a carbon-negative and climate-positive agriculture industry around the world, a Corteva release stated.
“Clearly, there’s a thirst and passion to collaborate and coordinate so that we can best tackle what is undoubtedly the biggest challenge of our lifetimes,” said Collins.
Corteva is already working toward creating market-driven financial incentives for farmers, the release noted.
The company’s subsidiary, Granular, is collaborating with Nori, a carbon dioxide removal marketplace. The site connects buyers of carbon offsets with farmers who are applying sustainable farming practices and provides them with a viable carbon credit market that will generate revenue.
“This is just the beginning,” said Collins. “There’s so much more we – and all of us working together – can do.”
Corteva is based near Wilmington and is the product of the merger and spin-offs of DowDuPont. Corteva is comprised of Dow and DuPont agriscience businesses.
Trading carbon credits is controversial among climate change skeptics. However, it is viewed in many quarters as a way to use the free market to reduce carbon emissions.
