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Their Galvanize Climate Solutions was joined in the $38 million
Series B fundraising by Salesforce founder Marc Benioff's TIME
Ventures and Rethink Impact, alongside existing investors
including trader Cargill and Microsoft's M12.
Food and agriculture contributes 26% of the world's total carbon
emissions, Regrow says, and is a growing area of focus for
companies as they look to reduce their own emissions by greening
their supply chains.
To help fix the problem, Regrow, a software-as-a-service (SaaS)
company, connects companies and others with farmers, who enrol
in various programmes that pay them for adopting farming
practices that reduce emissions, preserve soil quality and
minimise use of chemicals.
"Agriculture needs resilience not just to put food on our plates
today, but to support a liveable planet for future generations,"
said Regrow co-founder and chief executive Anastasia Volkova.
Such farming techniques in many cases involve reverting to more
traditional practices, common before the advent of
industrial-scale farming, but at a cost that many farmers are
unwilling to take without financial help.
Companies and others keen to see it happen, such as state-backed
institutions, meanwhile, want to be sure they are getting what
they pay for and not wasting money on a farmer who hasn't
actually changed methods and cut emissions.
Markets for carbon captured and stored in agricultural soils
have struggled to scale up due to systemic problems with
measuring their climate benefit and questions about the
permanence of carbon captured by intensive row crop farming.
Global croplands and grasslands can capture and store the
equivalent of up to 8.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide a year,
according to a 2019 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
Regrow's technology platform allows farmers to establish a
baseline for their carbon emissions and then estimate the likely
savings by changing certain practices, such as by tilling the
fields less or by introducing livestock to the farm.
After agreeing to make the changes, Regrow uses satellite
imaging and remote sensing to check the emissions have been
reduced, giving greater assurance to the buyers of the carbon
credits that are created as a result.
(Reporting by Simon Jessop and Karl Plume; Editing by Mark
Potter)
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