Ecosystem Services Market Consortium Publishes 2021 Annual Report Showcasing Innovation, Growth and Collaboration
June 21, 2022
The Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC) released its 2021 Annual Report highlighting the organization’s significant growth in 2021 which led to the May 2022 launch of the Eco-Harvest market program. ESMC is a non-profit that works to compensate farmers and ranchers who improve the environment through their agricultural practices. ESMC’s market program reduces greenhouse gases, increases soil carbon, improves water quality, and generates other ecosystem services benefits to society.
Key ESMC and ESMRC (ESMC’s research arm) milestones in 2021 include receiving IRS approval as a stand-alone 501(c)3 (non-profit) organization; expanding program coverage to eight of twelve US regions; completing version 9.0 of our integrated supply chain credit generation protocols; completing version 2.0 of our advanced technology Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) platform; and refining and streamlining programmatic and infrastructure investments. Details on these, as well as additional milestones and progress in research, policy, and communications are highlighted in the 2021 Annual Report.
ESMC’s 5-year goal for 2022 – 2026 is to transform decarbonization along the US agricultural supply chain through collective action. This includes key steps such as scaling ESMC’s market program to enable Net Zero outcomes in agricultural supply chains by enrolling at least five million acres in the market program. ESMRC will continue innovative R&D investments to expand the market program to include 100% US geographic coverage by 2025.
Said ESMC’s Executive Director Debbie Reed in her report introduction, “As we look back on 2021 and into 2022, it is gratifying to see the progress from another year’s innovation, growth, and collaboration. We continued to successfully engage agricultural value chain and supply chain partners in market program innovation, testing, and refinement to further build our program. With the generous support of a grant from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture (FFAR) and from many additional funders, members, and collaborators, we have achieved critical progress since launching our public private partnership in 2019 and are on target to launch our market program in 2022.”
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About Ecosystem Services Market Consortium
Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC) is a non-profit collective action program dedicated to scaling quantified and verified sustainable ecosystem services from agriculture. ESMC is a public private partnership of the agricultural supply chain and value chain – including agricultural producer groups and co-ops, major corporate food and beverage companies, agribusiness, conservation and environmental NGO’s, ag tech companies, land grant universities, and others. ESMC members collectively invested in and launched ESMC’s national scale market program, Eco-Harvest, in May 2022. Read more at www.ecosystemservicesmarket.org.
