The last two weeks of January involved a lot of conversations, exchange of ideas, and collecting feedback from potential customers, early adopters, partners, collaborators, and supporters at multiple events as part of the Grüne Woche in Berlin. These included the GFFA (Global Forum for Food and Agriculture), Startup-Days, Zukunftsforum Ländliche Entwicklung, and networking events of different stakeholders.
CinSOIL presence at the Grüne Woche Startup-Days provided a great platform to engage in enlightening conversations with diverse stakeholders. The strong interest shown for our mission, bringing more carbon where it belongs, #inSoil, signals that the time has come for a more sustainable food system.
One thing that stood out as a common thread across the different conversations was the interest shown by the different actors in contributing towards transforming the agrifood systems. In this regard, the efforts of different farmer cooperatives, activities of non-governmental organisations, initiatives of the different federal ministries like the BMEL (Ministry of Food and Agriculture), BMUV (Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety), and BMWK (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action), and the interest shown by the industrial partners point to the cross-cutting relevance and urgency of the issue. Agrifood systems have the potential to be the vital missing piece in the puzzle of climate action. Farmers in general and regenerative agriculture practitioners in particular are vital and indispensable actors in addressing the multiple challenges of biodiversity conservation, food & nutrition security, and climate action.
As one of the pioneers of facilitating insetting of emissions in the agrifood sector through the mainstreaming of regenerative agriculture and carbon farming, we found the different initiatives focussed on soil carbon sequestration particularly interesting. These include different research and innovation projects involving improving soil organic stocks in arable land, grasslands, and peatland. It was heartening to see the strong resonance around the idea that we believe in across the different actor groups. CinSOIL had conversations with different industrial partners to explore areas of potential cooperation in their decarbonisation journey and we are taking all the feedback received into account as we grow. We look forward to continuing these conversations and translating ideas into action.