Four years after its creation, FBN says it has grown Gradable into a successful division offering farmer’s new revenue via sustainability programs. But, it has bigger aspirations for Gradable to become the industry-wide standard platform, and therefore has taken on ADM as its partner for a jointly owned (50/50 ownership) to bring that to life.
“FBN started Gradable because we saw great demand across the entirety of processors, aggregators and growers as well,” says Steele Lorenz, the newly appointed CEO of Gradable. “Now it’s time to be able to stand up Gradable on its own. We will have the same operations and same commitment to grower data transparency, but we see the opportunity to become the industry platform.”
Lorenz says Gradable has more than 20,000 farmers users totaling 12 million acres and has facilitated more than $30 million in financial incentives for sustainable/regenerative practices every year. The platform has recorded scores for 200 million bushels of corn and soybeans.
“Since we’ve launched Gradable, the challenges we’ve seen aren’t on the farmers—the offers would come to market and fall apart--10,000 acre or 20,000 acre pilots weren’t the scale or scope of international trading,” Lorenz says.
He says many of the offers available on Gradable.com are geographically limited to certain supply sheds. One example is a program with ADM which offered a 20 cent per bushel premium on soybeans enrolled.
“We are adding new processors, facilities and partners all the time,” he says.
Other offers do not require specific delivery destinations such as cover crop planting programs.
“ADM’s regenerative agriculture efforts enrolled more than 2.8 million acres last year, and we know that’s just the beginning,” said Greg Morris, president of ADM’s Ag Services and Oilseeds business. “The continued expansion of this work requires a strong technology platform that enables farmers to easily participate and provides farm-level data for grain buyers and end customers. This new joint venture paves the way for the continued growth of Gradable, opening the door for even more farmers, commercial grain partners, and end customers to benefit from regen ag practices and the growing demand for sustainably sourced products.”
Despite a minority of global grain trade having a sustainability claim attached to it, Lorenz says Gradable is building for the future with a focus on offers based on regulatory markets, including:
- Low carbon fuels in California
- The 45Z carbon intensity tax credit provision from the Inflation Reduction Act
- Deforestation requirements for import into the EU
“We’ve targeted the claims tied to regulatory markets in a way to help farmers be prepared and providing the platform that would have an intense audit requirement,” Lorenz says. “Having these opportunities available to farmers is important, so when commodity prices are low like they are right now, they are suited to take advantage.”
