Overcoming Barriers to Change: Four Takeaways from SAS

Farmer Engagement

During the panel, attendees heard from Mike Williams, a California rancher who reflected on his past skepticism and dislike of the word “sustainability” and the feeling that it meant corporations coming in and trying to tell him how to run his ranch. Now Mike is chair of the board for the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef and connecting the full supply chain is a good opportunity for everyone to get a better understanding of the other.

This sentiment sums up why Athian works to meet producers where they’re at, given what works on their farm, and then matches them up with food brands that have common interests to develop credible and data-backed outcomes for producers and companies.

“Our approach builds bonds and partnerships,” Myer said. “This allows us to be conveners and facilitators in the process, rather than trying to tell producers what to do.”

Several sessions at the Summit addressed the need to make time to get to know producers, and the realities of their operations.

“We call it ‘ag time’ at Athian,” Myer said. “Things on the farm happen at a deliberate pace and you have to be willing to go along for the ride to be successful.”
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Rewarding Producers

Athian first attended SAS two years ago, when the company and its carbon-insetting platform for livestock was just an aspiration. The idea was to enable producers to monetize sustainable practices on farm, while delivering validated, certified emission reduction credits to the end of the value chain.

“We were lucky to have supply chain partners supporting us in this development,” Myer said. “Because, this year, we will pay millions of dollars to farmers to fund manure and enteric methane reductions.”
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Cost Sharing Opportunities

Reducing Scope 3 emissions, given their nature, requires participation from every step in the value chain. Myer reflected during the panel that, “no single company or producer is going to solve this challenge on its own.”

Athian is agnostic to the practices, as long as the resulting protocols pass through its stringent verification process, which includes review by Athian’s esteemed Scientific Advisory Board.

Given the complexity of the food supply, Myer says the process must be automated to scale up efforts, and decrease friction for producers and project owners, as well as share costs along the value chain.

“If you can effectively track, measure and verify the essential data, you can share inset credits – and the costs – to reduce the burden on a single participant while still maintaining revenue for the producer,” Myer said.

This is an important differentiator of inset markets – a topic that didn’t receive as much attention at the Summit but is important to overcoming barriers to adoption for all players. The Science Based Targets Initiative has encouraged companies to use insets to achieve Scope 3 reductions, but there are other benefits as well.

“Not only do insets inspire change within the supply chain, but they don’t punish early adopters, they allow for cost and credit sharing and reward producers for their efforts on farm,” Myer says.
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Future of Federal Funding

The recent U.S. election has many asking where sustainability will stand in the priorities of the new administration. The stakeholders on this Summit panel unanimously agreed their commitments to environmental projects and practices would not change.

“Ultimately this group of stakeholders at the Summit, and the industry at large, knows what is best to overcome these challenges,” Myer said. “Federal programs are great and they have a role to play in the early going, but the only way we’ll drive long term, sustainable change is if, as an industry, we fund it internally.”

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