German chemicals firm Bayer, Fargo-based digital ag software firm Bushel and Amazon Web Services have launched Project Carbonview, a programme to provide a digital carbon measurement for crop growers.

Project Carbonview has been conceptualised by Bayer Crop Science and developed in collaboration with Bushel and AWS to help farmers in the United States drive more sustainable supply chains and mitigate the impact agriculture has on the environment by aggregating the carbon footprint of end products. Project Carbonview is an example of Bayer’s aim to connect the farmer more deeply into the value chain to better capture their carbon contribution and drive the entire value chain to net-zero carbon emissions.

Beginning as a pilot programme, Project Carbonview is focused on creating awareness and acceptance for low-carbon fuel markets. Eligible farmers who enroll in the pilot will receive compensation for participation. Ultimately, once these markets are broadly established, we anticipate growers will be compensated based on the implementation of sustainable farming practices and will share in the financial incentives created by low-carbon fuel markets.

Project Carbonview focused on the United States will initially enable US ethanol producers (corn is a key ingredient in ethanol production) to track carbon emissions across the entire supply chain – from planting through production – and implement more sustainable business practices by providing the data needed to make more informed purchasing decisions and reduce their carbon emissions.

For farmers who opt into the programme, Project Carbonview streamlines on-farm data collection with Bayer’s Climate FieldView application and connects it with delivery and transportation data captured from the 54,000 US active users of Bushel’s platform. Through the Climate FieldView platform, farmers continue to own their data and choose who to share their data with.

Project Carbonview, which is built on AWS, allows permissioned access to on-demand product transaction and crop exchange market data from the ethanol production facilities through the Bushel platform to evaluate the carbon impact of sourcing and purchasing decisions.

“We are very excited to launch a solution to help transform the food and agriculture value chain by paving the way for a more resilient, regenerative and net-zero carbon future,” said Leo Bastos, Global Commercial Ecosystems Lead, Bayer Crop Science. “While FieldView helps farmers make more informed decisions on their own operations, Project Carbonview will make it possible for them to drive sustainability improvements across the entire value chain. The integration of our leading digital and data science under Project Carbonview will give farmers greater choice and resources to be compensated for more productive and sustainable decisions on-farm.”

As part of a recent pilot, Project Carbonview identified opportunities to optimise supply chain partners to reduce Scope 3 – or downstream supply chain – emissions in a single year. For farmers, Project Carbonview provides another option for them to participate in and capture value from these evolving markets. This new solution marks the latest development by Bayer – who is working to build a portfolio of farmer-facing programmes to complement its existing Bayer Carbon Initiative, a programme which incentivises the adoption of climate-smart practices, creating new revenue streams for growers who use technology to keep carbon in the soil – and out of the atmosphere.

“Project Carbonview gives grain buyers and producers visibility into the carbon impact of production so they can evaluate the impact of different agronomic practices, make sustainability improvements and help their customers make better purchasing decisions,” said Elizabeth Fastiggi, Head of Worldwide Business Development for Agriculture, AWS. “We supported Bayer by working backwards from their vision, to ensure Project Carbonview has the potential to be successfully adopted at scale within the current business operations of producers.”

“Project Carbonview makes it easy for producers and processors to share information. Through our relationship with Bayer and support of AWS, we can empower and incentivise sustainable behaviour across the agricultural value chain and build a scalable digital solution that can be deployed anywhere,” said Jake Joraanstad, co-founder and CEO of Bushel.

The team behind Project Carbonview is piloting the solution with US corn producers during the 2022 season and plans to expand the programme in the future to other global regions and other feed grains, food grains and oilseeds such as soybeans. Within the pilot, the team is exploring how Project Carbonview can assist ethanol producers to capture the impact of corn production within their emissions reporting, as well as opportunities for users to share best practices for achieving emissions benchmarks within a dedicated community.