Leading the Way to a Sustainable Future

   River Valley Cooperative continues to strive for new and state-of-the-art ways to work with member-owners to implement and document best soil health management and stewardship practices. Stewardship has always been important, but now more than ever, it is gaining exposure and momentum across the country. In February of 2021, River Valley Cooperative signed an agreement with Truterra, LLC, a subsidiary of Land O’ Lakes. Truterra offers the only farmer-owned, farmer-driven food and ag sustainability program in the U.S.

    The Truterra™ Stewardship Platform is a groundbreaking system that delivers profitability, stewardship, and key insights on a field-by-field basis. What does this mean to our member-owners that participate? River Valley Cooperative’s Data Specialist will use this state-of-the-art platform to work with growers to gain a deeper understanding of each field they farm. With this tool, River Valley Cooperative can document the grower’s stewardship efforts and capture the information needed to participate in developing markets such as carbon and sustainably produced commodities.

    An example of one of these developing markets was announced this past month by Truterra with the launch of TruCarbon, a new carbon program that will help growers generate and sell carbon credits to private sector buyers. TruCarbon represents the first and only farmer-owned carbon program in the U.S. designed to provide both the best experience for farmers and a different approach for carbon credit buyers. 

    TruCarbon offers buyers carbon credits created by populating soil and conservation science field data in combination with confirmation procedures. This program will make it easier to develop and sell carbon credits. By working with River Valley Cooperative Data Specialists utilizing the Truterra™ platform, the new TruCarbon program provides growers and River Valley Cooperative a powerful soil health planning suite of tools. These tools will help growers decide what is best for their business while optimizing their fields’ carbon credit potential. TruCarbon also maximizes the value and return for farmers with a premium carbon credit value.

    TruCarbon is launching with Microsoft as its first secured buyer to purchase carbon in 2021, which will help meet its ambitious commitment to be carbon negative by 2030. For this initial launch, participating farmers may receive $20 per ton of carbon with payments this summer for this first tranche of credits. Qualifying farmers may be compensated for carbon credits retroactively up to five years based on the soil health practices they adopted in those prior growing seasons. 

    With the launch of TruCarbon™, our partner Truterra is working through channels to reward River Valley Cooperative customers whose practices now have the potential to earn carbon credits. Today, the relationships between local farmers and carbon buyers begin. These are exciting times for growers, and River Valley Cooperative looks forward to helping our customers take advantage of these opportunities. 

    To learn more, please contact your local River Valley Cooperative representative or visit us at www.rivervalleycoop.com. We’re ready to begin answering sustainability and carbon questions today!