S1:E2 - Matt Rohlik: Producer Compensation in Early Supply Chain Decarbonization Efforts

Matt Rohlik is the Managing Director of Sales and Strategic Partnerships at ARVA Intelligence. 

 

ARVA plays a key role in the “insetting market” – the market for ecosystem assets *inside* companies’ supply chains. This is a crucial tool for ag-dependent companies to decarbonize their supply chains, which make up a significant amount of their total emissions – in most cases, more than 50%.

 

Matt has a deeply informed insider’s perspective on how the insetting and carbon offsetting market are shaping up in ag, demand dynamics from ecosystem buyers, and the challenges and rewards of facilitating and supporting producers who are creating and selling this new asset class.

Matt shares his background in farming, finance, and precision agriculture, and dives into ARVA Intelligence's role in ecosystem asset markets.

 

Matt discusses the complexities of insetting programs, offsets, carbon intensity (CI) scores, and their practical implications for growers, consumer packaged goods (CPGs), and supply chains.

 

Matt explains the growing interest in sustainable practices like cover crops, nutrient management, and soil health improvement, as well as the financial incentives that are now being offered to farmers to adopt these practices. We talk in detail about what payment ranges producers can expect to see from these programs. And we explore the challenges around regional implementation, trusted partnerships, and the future of ecosystem asset quantification, including carbon credits and CI scores.

 

The episode highlights the importance of communication between growers and buyers, the need for regionally appropriate practices, and how ARVA is helping bridge the gap between sustainable agriculture and market demand.

Notable Quotes 

 

• [04:44] - in the last three months, we've seen science-based target initiatives, or what's called SBTI go from around 6,500 to 8,000… about 18 to 20% are ag-specific…. (~05:00) …there's a lot of money that's coming into here that is gonna influence supply chains

• [06:36] When you bring farming people to the table with our urban cousins, we find out that we're not actually that very far away in our thinking and what we do for the environment. The problem is we just don't talk….So the transparency of food is just an evolution that's coming. And knowing how my food was raised, is it in some type of a protocol or standard that meets what we feel is generally acceptable? And I think it's actually a really good thing from the perspective they get to see a little limelight of what we do on a day-to-day basis. And when they find out that our tractors are more advanced than their Teslas, I think we're going to have a lot more in common than they think.

• [11:54] $15 to $35 an acre is a potential for farmers in these programs and which in today's world with a depressed economy 12 months ago corn was $2 higher you know so you think about 200 bushels of corn at $2 and that's a lot of money that has gone away where this is definitely helping I'm going to say keep farmers afloat per se but it's definitely helping on the revenue perspective side or the net revenue side
• [13:39] And we did a test for five years where cover crops and we implemented no-till, and it did not work very well. And we had all the experts there, and we followed it to the T, and frankly, we lost about $400 an acre…that is not sustainable…(14:39) Now if our farm in Arkansas, we use cover crops, the organic matter is increased by almost a half a point over three years, which is phenomenal.
• [15:29] …the program I might have here doesn't fit the program in Boone, Iowa or Effingham, Illinois or Fort Wayne, Indiana or Columbus, Ohio. We have to be very realistic and I think the end buyers and CPG's are starting to see that this is not just a cookie cutter approach. It definitely has to be agronomically led