Arcadia Biosciences, Inc., an agricultural technology company focused on developing technologies and products that benefit the environment and human health, announced that the company has submitted a carbon credit methodology to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the United
Arcadia Biosciences, Inc., an agricultural technology company focused on developing technologies and products that benefit the environment and human health, announced that the company has submitted a carbon credit methodology to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The methodology would allow farmers to claim carbon credits from reduced fertilizer use in conjunction with Arcadia’s Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) technology. Arcadia’s NUE technology enables crops to maintain high yields while requiring significantly reduced levels of nitrogen fertilizer.
Globally, agriculture is the second largest industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and the use of nitrogen fertilizer is a major component of those emissions. Despite its significance, most efforts to incentivize adoption of low carbon practices and technologies have bypassed agriculture. The United Nations CDM stimulates emissions reductions by allowing developing countries to earn carbon credits that can be traded and sold to industrialized countries.
To develop the methodology for calculating emissions reductions in agriculture, Arcadia Biosciences and the Ningxia (China) Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Science (NAAFS) have been measuring baseline greenhouse gas emissions fro