The Business of Soil Health

S2:E6 - Netting $3K–$5K per Acre: The Business Case for U.S. Agroforestry with Jeremy Kaufman

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Corn and soy net $100–$200 per acre -- or less, given the extraordinarily difficult commodity markets at the moment.

Chestnuts? Potentially $3,000–$5,000. But those returns don’t come free, the upfront cost of installing and maintaining tree crops is significant.

Jeremy Kaufman, the co-founder & COO of Propagate, digs into the economics and project finance structures they've built to make commercial agroforestry viable and ensure farmers aren’t left holding all the risk.

In this episode, we dig into:

  • The detailed economics of commercial agroforestry with chestnuts, black locust, and other “growth crops” in U.S. agroforestry
  • The financing models bringing landowners, farmers, and investors together
  • The market outlook for the commercial crops they recommend How Propagate structures deals across landowners, farmers, and investors
  • Jeremy's hard-earned lessons that carbon credits alone rarely pencil, but add value as a stacked revenue stream.

    • Jeremy also shares lessons from nearly a decade of building Propagate: crop orientation vs. practices orientation, which kinds of investors actually fit this space, and why humility is essential when working with farmers. 

    ...more
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