Helping Climate-Friendly Farmers

Although carbon dioxide takes center stage in greenhouse gas talk, nitrous oxide (N2O) is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture and third biggest overall. However, many companies have stalled out on curbing their scope 3 N2O emissions, the indirect emissions not made by the company itself or from its energy use. "These changes have to happen at the farm," says Chris Abbott, CEO of ag tech company Pivot Bio. "A grain company doesn't inherently have access to the farm. They don't sell crop input. They don't sell fertilizer. They need a partner to do that." Pivot Bio's N-Ovator program connects companies, including Nestlé and Heineken, looking to get a handle on their upstream emissions and verify progress to their climate goals with growers who want to use Pivot Bio's existing nitrogen-fixing, microbe-based products in lieu of polluting synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Companies can buy nitrogen credits, and farmers who use alternatives and verify their practices get paid. N-Ovator is the first tech platform for N2O insetting—that is, it focuses on cutting intrinsic supply-chain emissions, instead of simply investing in unrelated projects, and gives growers data to quantify that decarbonization. As of February, farmers received more than $6 million in payments through the program and in 2023 they replaced over 16,500 tons of synthetic fertilizer across 800,000 acres.