Working Ranch Magazine Summer 2025

To that end, AgSpire designs and implements programs to help compa nies interact and invest in their supply chain, Knock says. By incentivizing ranchers and farmers to adopt car bon-sequestering management on their property, those companies can posi tively address the environmental aspect of beef production with their customers. “By making those investments in their supply chain, they’re equipping farm ers and ranchers to adopt activities and practices that display the positive fea tures of what we do,” he says. “So we’ll take the goals that a com pany has on how they’d like to bolster their supply chain, then take their investment and sometimes couple that with public investment if it’s available.” In that way, money flows to ranchers and farmers through programs that are practical, implementable, syner gistic, and incentivize producers to implement regenerative practices. “We’re an acre-based, voluntary regenerative program that has car bon sequestration as one of its many benefits,” Knock says. “Our goal is to find and work with companies that are truly in it to bolster the supply chain, to make the supply chain more robust and increase consumer confidence and ultimately their demand for beef.” SUMMER 2025 I 81

he wanted something better for the boots-on-the-ground crowd, which he proudly claims. Enter an inset-type of market. “I’ve always been interested in looking for ward,” Knock says, to how ranchers can better utilize the millions of acres of grassland they manage. “And curi ous on what’s going to be the motivat ing factor to keep people coming back, to continually feel confident and sup portive of animal protein,” he says. As he pondered, he realized three factors could hurt consumers’ confi dence in beef. “One of those is beef’s contribution to human nutrition. And we’re winning that battle.” The second is the social aspect of rural America, one of the legs on the three-legged stool of sustainability. “I think we’re also doing well in the ethical component.” The third are the environmental effects of ranching and the misinfor mation coming from anti-beef groups. “I really wanted to disprove that and to build confidence with consumers and build confidence with compa nies that are large beef purchasers to understand what really happens on the farm and ranch level to point out all the enormously important things that are happening on the ground.”

Ritten says. “No one is going to pay me for what I’m already doing.” So the offset contract will state how much additional soil carbon is required above the baseline. Permanence is another challenge to consider. “Carbon can stay in the atmosphere for a thousand years,” he says. This means carbon contract buy ers want some assurance that the addi tional management will lock carbon up in the soil for a given number of years. “I always recommend having an attorney look at the contract,” he advises. “And have your lender look at it, too, because most contracts state that the storage inventory belongs to the landowner, whether or not that is the land manager. Anytime you have a mortgage on your operation or are leasing land, what’s the trans ferability and what’s the liability of non-compliance?” Droughts, after all, tend to occur. The other type of carbon market is called an inset, which tends to have less rigorous regulations and proto cols than an offset contract, Ritten says, and is supply-chain oriented. With offset contracts, Knock real ized the money doesn’t necessarily flow back into rural America. So, when he envisioned AgSpire five years ago,