Climate smart ag practices are a hot topic, especially as we get further into the planting and growing seasons.
In afternoon discussions at the AIM for Climate Summit, the CEO of Archer Midland Daniels says the focus needs to be on what farmers can bring to the table rather than takeaway.
“Sometimes in our fight and climate change, we have concentrated too much on what we need to remove and not that much on what we can bring to the table from restorative properties in which we can bring those ecosystems back because the important thing here is to protect water, to protect biodiversity, to bring resiliency to farmers. So, farmers have had always this symbiotic relationship with the land.
“They understand a little bit like ADM understands the value of that, but sometimes we need the enablers or maybe more than enablers. A little bit of a notch, you know, to give them the proper incentive to do that. I think it’s a lot of groundwork. ADM we buy about, we procure about a little bit over 10 percent of all the crops in the world. We have relationships with 200,000 farmers in the world. That’s a lot of groundwork. That’s a lot of town halls that you need to go and explain that, and then we need to put together the incentives, whether with climate-smart agriculture or with what we’re doing with Ramon here in Pepsi or the agreements that we have in Brazil,” says Juan Luciano.
He says sometimes in places like Brazil, it is difficult to find the demand to meet the supply they can generate.
