Spoke Notes from call with Anirudh Keny (Biz Dev) on Feb 15 2023
Claim to be able to assess soil organic carbon 30mn below soil surface at 10mn resolution with low error rates and that this approach has been accepted by Verra
Have registered 6 projects w Verra covering 5mn acres in 12 countries; using VM0042 v2 methodology
Have sold 150mn forward credits and are now rushing to fill supply
2 projects are actually certified by the registries which are in Mexico and South India (farmers adopting various practices that increase SOC)
For the South India project, expect farmers can get $10 to $12 per acre
While it varies by project, farmers get ~50% of credit value, remainder split between partner (whose cut is “low double digits”) and Boomitra
Boomitra views carbon finance as a gateway into providing advisory content to farmers. Idea is that farmers will see so much benefit (better yield, cost savings on inputs, etc.) from Boomitra’s advisories that the carbon offset revenue will be insignificant
And I guess farmers will be willing to pay for the advisory services? that wasn’t super clear. I found this angle to be a surprising twist and offered to share our perspective on digital advisory if helpful in future calls
One nuance is that today Boomitra is not recommending specific practices; they rely on partners (who also earn a cut of the carbon offsets) to promote whatever makes sense locally, Boomitra just measures the change in SOC and handles the carbon credit sale; they do provide partners a view to the farmers field
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Likes the idea of FPOs as “information partners” (collect data, disseminate information on program and recommended practices) but in practice, tried working with an FPO who was supposed to map field boundaries and farmer practices; the data collected was poor quality and unusable
Because they can track to 10mn resolution, Boomitra is working with individual farmers. They didn't mention any of the typical issues we have heard from others about getting land records
To account for impermanence (eg, soil carbon get released bc of a flood), Boomitra keeps a 10 to 20% buffer pool
Boomitra suggested they can do an assessment in a certain geography and provide an estimate for how much offset revenue a farmer may be eligible for; their imagery goes back a few years so even farmers who switched to practices that increase SOC a couple years back could be eligible
I asked if Boomitra is working in AP with ZBNF / CMNF farmers since apparently they have reported increases in SOC from that aproach and his perspective is that not many farmers have adopted the approach and often farmers do ZBNF on a tiny portion of land and then “conventional” approaches on the remainder
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Notes from call with Anirudh Keny (Biz Dev) on Nov 10 2021.
Next steps:
Bootmitra to share whitepaper that details how they are able to remotely measure SOC with a low error rate (<20% and in some cases lower than 5%)
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POC: DG to share a list of 30 lat/long and plot area from AP / Telangana and Boomitra will send back estimate for SOC% over past 3 years along with potential payments to farmers from sale of carbon offsets
Boomitra would like to brainstorm how the carbon farming concept can be communicated to farmers
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Whitepaper
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Call Notes:
Use multi-spectral remote sensing to generate estimates for SOC at 30cm depth and various other parameters at 10 m resolution.
Where model has been calibrated using ground samples, claim <20% error rate, will share whitepaper that provides further detail. For India, model has been calibrated for punjab, haryana, UP, andhra, telangana
Use of proceeds for a credit sold for $10 (This is their goal at scale, the actual right now may be different)
$5.50 to the farmer
$1.50 to the “behavior change expert” This would be DG. Partner that works with farmers to communicate practices that sequester carbon
$3 to Boomitra who serves as project developer. Boomitra sells the credit, does MRV via their remote sensing capability, lists the credits with a registry, etc.
Standard list of practices that can increase SOC% and thus sequester carbon (see below). Boomitra estimates these can sequester 3 tons per acre per year
incorporate crop residue in the soil, intercropping / planting nitrogen fixing crops, proper irrigation, low/no tillage, organic amendments (manure), optimize nitrogen fertilizer usage
Credits are not yet registered but the plan is to register via Verra VM042. Apparently, the methodology is being revised to allow for a “dynamic performance benchmark” approach which sounds like an RCT; set up a control and treatment group to prove that the treatment group increases SOC. In process of registering projects in Mexico, North and South India
Plan for initial offset sales to happen soon and payments to farmers within 6 months.
Did not get a great answer on issue of permanence; sounds like Boomitra keeps some buffer pool of credits in reserve and asks farmers to make a pledge to continuing practices for 10 years but once a credit is sold, the risk is on the buyer
On additionality, Boomitra claims they will look back upto 5 years
Boomitra doesn’t need to see any logs to verify what is happening on the ground and how that translates to CO2e reduction; rely entirely on remote sensing. Just need farm boundary to make their assessment
Re: Yara Agoro, Boomitra feels they are targeting the US market (whereas Boomitra is global south) and they don’t have the tech to do MRV at scale (which Boomitra apparently does)
Not getting involved in offtake of physical commodity, just payment for increasing SOC. At $10 per credit, the payment may not be enough to incentivize behavior change but expect prices to rise
Feel that relying on remote sensing is superior to model based approach (eg, RothC)
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