Corporate Support
Supporting Generations of Sustainable Farming Practices
The Farmers for Soil Health Marketplace directly connects consumer packaged goods companies with farmers practicing sustainable agriculture. Unlike any other program, these transparent transactions occur in real-time without an intermediary, reducing costs and establishing new grower relationships. The Marketplace platform includes supply shed mapping to help you find farmers who positively contribute to your source regions and supports your company to meet its sustainability goals. This is the first direct-to-grower marketplace, reducing transaction costs and time, establishing new grower relationships, as well as sending a demand signal from company to grower for sustainably produced commodities.
Acres transacted through the program are practice-verified by satellite and attested to through the farmer enrollment process, allowing those acres to count towards regenerative agriculture program goals. The first Marketplace was open from July 24 through August 23, 2024, and offered more than 55,000 acres across 14 states of verified cover crops on soy and corn fields. The next Marketplace will open in 2025.
FAQs
Each field’s cover crop acres purchased have a unique ID and are available to view via DTN, which hosts the data in its Ecofield platform. DTN is accountable to USDA, Farmers for Soil Health consortia members, and the buyer for appropriate security and transparency. For a field to be included in Marketplace, it must have been enrolled correctly with attestations, a cover crop planted in accordance with NRCS Cover Crop Conservation Practice Standards (CPS 340), and verified through remote sensing. Any field that fails remote sensing verification is rejected until an in-state technical assistant has verified with the farmer and thorough evidence is provided, such as a receipt for a compliant cover crop seed mix.
DTN is responsible for hosting field data and is required to ensure that once a field’s cover crop acreage has been transacted it cannot be sold again.
Please watch this short video explaining how transactions occur.
Cover crops can cost a farmer an average of $37 for seed, planting, and termination but costs can be as high as $78 per acre. The program pays a declining cost-share rate over three years, however, it does not cover the entire cost of cover crops. Please submit a reasonable offer of at least $5 per acre and consider the costs a grower incurs, as low offers will be a disincentive to participate in Marketplace. We want to build trust between growers and food companies, and this can only be done with competitive offers for the services that cover crops provide.
No, but we encourage companies to purchase a farmer’s entire acreage, not just a portion. We also encourage a minimum investment of $10,000 in the Marketplace to ensure the transaction time benefits both parties.
Upon agreement with a farmer, DTN will invoice the GPGs on 30-day payment terms. DTN will hold payment on its balance sheet for each farmer until they have uploaded a scale ticket of sufficient volume to ensure that the corn or soybean grown (following the sowing of the cover crop) has entered your supply chain. Any overpayment will be refunded by DTN. Should an escrow account be preferred, this can be arranged.
We are transacting acres of cover crops for this first pilot but will offer CO2e reductions for purchase in the future. Acres not purchased via this initial Marketplace pilot will be offered as a CO2e reduction later this year.
The farmer will receive one hundred percent of the amount agreed upon in the negotiation process. A 5% surcharge will be added to your purchase for the administration of Marketplace when buying acres, and a 10% surcharge when buying CO2e (later this year). In the long term, the surcharge will likely be between 15% and 20% (to cover all costs, including enrollment, verification, auditing, and Marketplace).