Building A Model For Regenerative Agriculture
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It can be hard for those outside of the industry to comprehend the scale of agriculture in North America. Because the scale of farming is so massive, small improvements in this industry can add up to having big impacts. Kevin Wright is the head of North American Agricultural Operations at Manulife, which invests in and manages farmland on behalf of their clients.
Wright… “ From a size standpoint, when you look at a, let's just take row crops for example. When you look at our row crop footprint in North America, it's going to be north of 160,000 acres. When we look at our higher value crops, such as tree nuts, apples, cherries. Cranberries citrus, we're gonna have probably a little over 50,000, 50 to 55,000 acres total.”
Wright is hoping to build a model for regenerative agriculture that can be applied across that vast amount of acreage.
Wright…. “ And what we want to do over time is we want to build a model and understand the impacts, and then we wanna push that out to help educate. Our farmers, our production partners so that they can understand the soil health benefits as well as the profitability benefits back to the farm operation. The profit impacts, and incorporates some of these enhancements, or practices into their operation. Allowing them to make money, which is what we're all in business to do, but more importantly, focused on the health of the soil because that is our long-term goal is over time, specifically whenever I, we go back to talking about that appreciating asset.”
That’s Kevin Wright of Manulife Investment Management.
