Regenerative agriculture is the next great ally in fight against climate change

At the same time, I want to tem­per the hype, refo­cus the con­ver­sa­tion and use the exam­ple of agri­cul­ture to forge a pro­duc­tive tem­plate for all busi­ness sec­tors with car­bon habits to fight cli­mate change.

First, let’s define regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture: It encom­pass­es prac­tices such as cov­er crop­ping and con­ser­va­tion tillage that, among oth­er things, build soil health, enhance water reten­tion, and sequester and abate carbon.

The broad excite­ment around regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture is tied to its poten­tial to mit­i­gate cli­mate impact at scale. The Nation­al Acad­e­mies of Sci­ences, Engi­neer­ing, and Med­i­cine esti­mates that soil seques­tra­tion has the poten­tial to elim­i­nate over 250 mil­lion met­ric tons of CO2 per year, equiv­a­lent to 5% of U.S. emissions.

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that regen­er­a­tive prac­tices are not new. Con­ser­va­tion­ists have advo­cat­ed for cov­er crop­ping and reduced tillage for decades, and farm­ers have led the charge.

It seems that every week a new agribusi­ness, con­sumer pack­aged goods com­pa­ny, bank, tech­nol­o­gy cor­po­ra­tion, celebri­ty or Face­book friend announces sup­port for regen­er­a­tive agriculture.

For those of us who have been work­ing on cli­mate and/​or agri­cul­ture solu­tions for the last cou­ple of decades, this is both excit­ing and worrisome.

With the rush to be a part of some­thing so impor­tant, the details and hard work, the incre­men­tal advance­ments and wins, as well as the big, hairy prob­lems that remain can be over­looked or for­got­ten. When so many are swing­ing for the fences, it’s easy to for­get that sin­gles and dou­bles usu­al­ly win the game.

As a man­ag­ing part­ner and founder of DBL Part­ners, I have specif­i­cal­ly sought out com­pa­nies to invest in that not only have win­ning busi­ness mod­els but also solve the planet’s biggest prob­lems. I believe that agri­cul­ture can be a lead­ing cli­mate solu­tion while feed­ing a grow­ing population.

At the same time, I want to tem­per the hype, refo­cus the con­ver­sa­tion and use the exam­ple of agri­cul­ture to forge a pro­duc­tive tem­plate for all busi­ness sec­tors with car­bon habits to fight cli­mate change.

To read Nan­cy Pfund’s full pub­li­ca­tion, please vis­it TechCrunch​.com