Rabobank tackles CO2 challenge by connecting corporates and farmers

Rabobank has unveiled an online platform that connects large corporates looking to offset their emissions with smallholder farmers in developing countries who are sequestering carbon through agroforestry. By planting trees on their land, farmers in developing countries can offer the CO2 sequestered to large corporates looking to offset their emissions.

Developed with Microsoft, the platform will launch in 2022 but has already been piloted with hundreds of smallholder farms in sub-Saharan Africa, which have planted more than 50,000 trees in the last year.

Rabobank has big plans for the initiative, hoping to sign up 15 million farmers by 2025, amounting to an area of agroforestry three times the size of the Netherlands, sequestering 150 Mt of CO2 emissions annually.

Companies that specialise in remote sensing technologies will measure the delta in biomass to ensure transparency on how much carbon is sequestered.

Rabobank says that farmers benefit not just from the money they receive but by improving soil nutrients and water levels, reducing the risk of yield loss due to climate and weather events.