PARTNER UPDATE. Did you know that a small portion of seaweed in dairy cows’ diets can reduce their methane emissions by more than 80%? And that this can also lead to a higher income for the farmer.
Neutral, the first carbon-neutral food company in the United States – and a new partner of We Don’t Have Time – will talk about this and other exciting climate solutions during Climate Week NYC.
Neutral, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, is on a mission to drastically reduce emissions from meat and dairy farms. The company was founded in 2019, and today its carbon-neutral dairy products can be found in 2,000 stores in 45 states. Having recently raised $ 12 million in its first series A funding, Neutral is now ready to move into the next phase of growth.
”Agriculture is a driver of climate change, but it can also be part of the solution. That’s why we founded Neutral”, says Ann Radil, Head of Carbon Reduction at Neutral. ”Neutral provides carbon-neutral staples found in most households, and we scale adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices.”
”The collaborations we are building are designed to address the most prominent barriers to implementation that producers face”, says Ann Radil, Head of Carbon Reduction at Neutral..
Neutral works with primarily organic, family-owned farms. Each collaboration begins with a detailed and rigorous accounting of all the greenhouse gas emissions embodied in the end product.
This life-cycle assessment, LCA, includes everything from what the cows eat and what the cows burp, to transportation, the energy used to power the farm, and what happens to the milk carton at the end of its life cycle.
”What the rigorous LCA tells us is that 72 percent of the footprint of dairy occurs on farm. The biggest opportunities that we see are the solutions that address the largest greenhouse gas emission sources on the farm. Many of those solutions are related to reducing methane, for instance by introducing new ways of handling manure, and changing what cows eat. This year alone we’re investing over a million dollars in projects that will reduce and remove more than 65 000 metric tonnes over their lifetime.”
https://youtu.be/oJp9ZOZjTUs
To reduce methane emissions, Neutral tries to identify forage modifications that cows will love to eat, like tannin-optimized feed. Lately the company has also started experimenting with seaweed. Research has shown that even a very modest amount of seaweed in the cows’ diet can reduce methane emissions by 82 percent or more. ”The research is really compelling. We’re actively working on a trial now with a seaweed supplement producer and one of our farmers, in partnership with Colorado State, to measure the effects in our supply chains. We think that there is a tremendous opportunity here.”
Reducing methane burping may also improve milk production, thereby making the climate solution a good business case. And that’s just one of the economic benefits Neutral has discovered in their partnership with farmers.
”There is a fantastic business case here. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, these products also yield co-benefits that the producers care about. It improves profitability, it improves soil health and resilience, it increases efficiency, and in some cases brings new revenue streams.”
To handle the emissions that can’t yet be reduced, Neutral invests in 3rd party verified carbon offsets from dairy projects across the country.
For many of the farmers Neutral are collaborating with, implementing these solutions is also about future-proofing their business models in an increasingly unstable climate. Extreme weather events, like forest fires and long-term droughts, are becoming increasingly common in many parts of the US.
”The farmers we work with are interested in solutions that will increase their resilience, for example soil health and water management. All farmers we work with today are in one way or another impacted by wildfire, which makes them start to rethink how they manage their herds, for instance.”
Earlier this year, Neutral partnered with We Don’t Have Time. According to Ann Radil, it’s a perfect match.
“You’re such a fantastic organization. We couldn’t be more mission-aligned. As a very nimble start-up, it’s been so important to us to have a very entrepreneurial partner in advocacy as well. Just the fact you gave us the ability to present a panel for South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. That was a huge opportunity for us to get together and highlight to a passionate audience what solutions are available and working. You need to have an entrepreneurial mindset to pursue some of these far-reaching opportunities to do this kind of storytelling, and we’ve found that to be the case with your group. We also love that you have a global audience. We’re going to look into various ways to engage with them.” On September 20, Ann Radil and Neutral’s CEO Marcus Lovell Smith will join the We Don’t Have Time broadcast The Road to COP27, a full-day live broadcast that is part of this year’s Climate Week NYC. ”We are really looking forward to networking with our partners and connecting with other leaders in this space, to share what we have learned, and to learn from others”, says Ann Radil. ”We’re also excited to wrap up some work we’ve been doing with food and agriculture working groups, which have been looking at how we collectively co-develop carbon accounting best practices that will incentivize the creating of insets versus offsets. We want companies to be incentivized to take responsibility for their own supply-chain emissions reduction. We’re not going to offset our way out of this problem.”
By MARKUS LUTTEMAN
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56 w
Awesome approach in becoming part of the solution
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84 w
Thankyou for implementing best solutions. Looking forward to hear more from you on 20th. All the best to your endeavours of making our planet better!
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84 w
Nice
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84 w
Wow. This is true Climate Action. Thank you Neutral!
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84 w
Looking forward to learning more about Neutral's work during Climate Week NYC!