In the News

Through The Terraton Challenge, innovators will compete to develop solutions that advance The Terraton Initiative, the global effort to remove 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Ag tech company, Indigo Agriculture, has created a carbon marketplace where growers who sequester carbon are paid and businesses, nonprofits or anyone interested in investing in the marketplace can purchase carbon credits, typically used to offset the release of greenhouse gases from some other activity. The company aims to reduce carbon dioxide by 1 trillion tons. Ed Smith is the head of Indigo Carbon, and oversees the company’s Terraton Initiative. If a farmer has a 100-acre field, and puts three tons of carbon dioxide into the ground, Smith says that farmer would be compensated $45 per acre — for a total of $4,500 for the entire field. 

The processes that generate high-quality, fertile topsoil can take centuries. But the world is ploughing through that resource at an alarming rate. About 40% of the world's land has already been taken over by agriculture, while livestock grazing and expanding urban areas are taking further chunks out of what is left over.  At first glance, it might seem that there is no shortage of mud and dirt around the world. But it's the quality that really counts. 

 The Boston-based firm, Indigo Ag, coats seeds in beneficial microbes in the hope of giving young plants their own ready-made microbiome that will boost the nutrients they receive as they grow, while also acting as a first line of defence against diseases. Coating seeds with pesticides or micronutrients is already a fairly common, if relatively new, approach in the agricultural industry. But adding microorganisms is more unusual, partly because they have a limited shelf life.  Indigo claims that by drying the microbes and mixing them with a polymer on the surface of the seeds, they can be stored for months, if not years, before they are sown. Read More

  Indigo forecasts end of season yield at 159.4 bu/ac for corn and 47.6 bu/ac for soybeans in the U.S. These forecasts were generated through Indigo Atlas, a living map of the world’s food supply that models crop health and yield at the county, state, and national level. This crop report is available on Indigo’s website, via the Indigo Atlas Insights page, an open access repository offering visibility into data, insights, and expert commentary on the global food system. Boston, Massachusetts, July 11, 2019 — Indigo Ag, a company dedicated to harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet, releases its corn and soybean production report ahead of the USDA’s July 11th World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE). In recent years, the models powering Indigo Atlas have outperformed the USDA’s in-season estimate. In 2017, for example, Indigo’s models predicted the final corn yield within 1% of the final data five months ahead of the USDA’s end of season report.

David Perry, President and CEO of Indigo, made a guest appearance on the podcast AgriTalk, a daily national conversation about the latest issues impacting agriculture and rural America.

Memphis' new corporate citizen, Indigo Ag, is not a quiet tech company. It has industry-disrupting, world-changing ideas. Although the Boston-based agriculture firm has only filled about one-third of its North American commercial headquarters in Downtown Memphis so far, the company made national news at The Peabody this week.   Wednesday, at its first annual Beneficial Ag conference, Indigo Ag launched a collaborative initiative to be a major player in the reduction and reversal of global warming.

For the first time in human history, atmospheric carbon dioxide has exceeded 415ppm, representing an increase of one trillion tons — or, a teraton— of atmospheric CO2 since pre-industrial levels of 280ppm. Utilizing the potential of agricultural soils, The Terraton Initiative seeks to remove one trillion tons of CO2from the atmosphere. With Indigo’s integrated approach to agriculture, and partnerships with representatives from across the value chain, The Terraton Initiative will unlock the most scalable, immediate and affordable opportunity to address climate change that exists today.

Indigo Agriculture, the Boston-based start-up that uses natural microbiology to revolutionize the way farmers grow crops, has unveiled a first-of-a-kind program to tackle climate change worldwide. The company launched The Terraton Initiative on Wednesday to accelerate carbon sequestration from agricultural soil on a massive scale. The goal: to capture 1 trillion metric tons (a teraton) of carbon dioxide worldwide from 3.6 billion acres of farmland through a marketplace that gives farmers incentives to implement regenerative farming practices.

Last month, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere surpassed 415 parts per million, the highest in human history. Environmental experts say the world is increasingly on a path toward a climate crisis. The most prominent efforts to prevent that crisis involve reducing carbon emissions. But another idea is also starting to gain traction — sucking all that carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it underground.