20 Million Acres Later: Regenerative Ag Has Its Business Model

People assume farmers are conservative by nature. Cautious. Set in their ways.

Ryan Jones, VP of Sustainability at Indigo Ag, has a different read: farmers aren’t risk-averse. They’re risk-saturated.

Consider factors like weather, debt, input costs, labor, and fluctuating commodity prices. One bad season can set a farmer back years. So when someone shows up and says, “Change how you farm,” the first question any farmer asks is: who’s carrying the risk?

That’s the problem Indigo was built to solve. Pay farmers to adopt regenerative practices. Quantify the outcomes. Connect them to buyers through carbon markets or corporate supply chains. Today, Indigo operates in 15 countries and manages a portfolio spanning 20 million acres, delivering over a megaton of greenhouse gas reductions/removals and conserving nearly 100 billion gallons of water—and it recently announced a 12-year offtake agreement with Microsoft for 2.85 million tons of carbon removal credits.

But this conversation is about more than keeping carbon in the soil. It’s also about water. In the Mid-South rice belt, companies face an existential sourcing risk and farmers face an existential livelihood risk. And with a shared aquifer, one farmer conserving water doesn’t move the needle if everyone else keeps pumping.

The only way through is everyone moving together. And Indigo’s bet is that you get there by making the most practical thing the most profitable thing—fast enough to matter.

Show Notes

Guest: Ryan Jones, Vice President of Sustainability

Company: Indigo Ag

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