Join host Adam Larson as he sits down with Samantha Jewell, author and CEO, Soil Carbon Advisory at urth.io, on this episode of the Count Me In Podcast. Samantha shares her fascinating journey from organic farming to pioneering soil carbon credits in Australia. She explains the crucial role these credits play in sequestering carbon and improving soil quality. Dive into the intricacies of carbon markets, the potential of regenerative agriculture, and the impact of evolving ESG laws. Learn about the challenges in educating financial professionals and the innovative solutions Samantha is bringing to the table, including blockchain transparency and smart contracts. Discover why big businesses should consider buying soil carbon credits and what it means for our environment and future. If you’re curious about sustainability, agriculture, or climate action, this conversation is a must-listen.
Sponsor: Today's episode is brought to you by U.S. Bank. U.S. Bank is a trusted financial partner for our clients, businesses and communities. We believe in doing the right thing and putting people first. It’s an honor to be recognized as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies® by the Ethisphere Institute for the tenth consecutive year. From commercial credit cards and program management tools to innovative payment technologies and transportation offerings, U.S. Bank Corporate Payment Systems has the right solution to help your organization reduce payment costs, enhance control and streamline your entire payment processing function. We’ll partner with you to uncover your challenges and provide smart, clear and honest guidance to help you meet the financial goals for your business. Visit usbank.com/corporatepayments to learn more.
Chapters
Join host Adam Larson as he sits down with Samantha Jewell, author and CEO, Soil Carbon Advisory at urth.io, on this episode of the Count Me In Podcast. Samantha shares her fascinating journey from organic farming to pioneering soil carbon credits in Australia. She explains the crucial role these credits play in sequestering carbon and improving soil quality. Dive into the intricacies of carbon markets, the potential of regenerative agriculture, and the impact of evolving ESG laws. Learn about the challenges in educating financial professionals and the innovative solutions Samantha is bringing to the table, including blockchain transparency and smart contracts. Discover why big businesses should consider buying soil carbon credits and what it means for our environment and future. If you’re curious about sustainability, agriculture, or climate action, this conversation is a must-listen.
Sponsor: Today's episode is brought to you by U.S. Bank. U.S. Bank is a trusted financial partner for our clients, businesses and communities. We believe in doing the right thing and putting people first. It’s an honor to be recognized as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies® by the Ethisphere Institute for the tenth consecutive year. From commercial credit cards and program management tools to innovative payment technologies and transportation offerings, U.S. Bank Corporate Payment Systems has the right solution to help your organization reduce payment costs, enhance control and streamline your entire payment processing function. We’ll partner with you to uncover your challenges and provide smart, clear and honest guidance to help you meet the financial goals for your business. Visit usbank.com/corporatepayments to learn more.
Creators & Guests
Producer
Adam Larson
Producer and co-host of the Count Me In podcast
Guest
Samantha Jewel
CEO. Soil Carbon Advisory at urth.io. Aggregates and facilitates carbon sales for farmers' though biologically rich soil carbon.
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IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) brings you the latest perspectives and learnings on all things affecting the accounting and finance world, as told by the experts working in the field and the thought leaders shaping the profession. Listen in to gain valuable insight and be included in the future of accounting and finance!
Adam Larson:
Welcome to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today, we're joined by Samantha Jewel, author, CEO, soil carbon adviser at urth.io . Samantha's path in the carbon markets began with concerns over food ingredients and GMOs in the 19 nineties, leading to her groundbreaking work in organic farming and soil carbon credits. In this episode, we'll explore Samantha's pioneering efforts in Australia, where she was the first to buy soil carbon credits in 2006.
Adam Larson:
We'll discuss the immense potential of regenerative agriculture and the role of financial markets in driving ESG adoption. Samantha will also share insights from her book, Carbon is Not a Dirty Word, and how emerging frameworks and block tech technology are shaping the global carbon market. Get ready to be inspired, and let's dive in. Well, Samantha, I'm I'm very happy to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much, for coming on.
Adam Larson:
And today, we're gonna be talking about, carbon credits. And I wanted to start a little bit about you could share, about your journey into the carbon markets and what kinda led you focus on, especially, the soil carbon credits?
Samantha Jewel:
Yeah. Look, I started 27 years ago back in when mad cow hit England, and we my family was feeding, 50,000 customers a week with the family restaurant. We're the 1st restaurant chain in Australia in 65. And I was you know, with my first child, and I went, what? They're feeding it cow meat.
Samantha Jewel:
That's just the most insane thing I could imagine. And I kind of thought, oh, god. Would it we're Australians. We're so laid back. And so, we probably aren't paying any attention to this.
Samantha Jewel:
So I I went into the family business and went through every ingredient to the stores. We had a very big menu. We made everything from scratch, but, obviously, you're bringing ingredients in. And I wrote to all the companies, and I was at the same time, I discovered GMOs, and I found a lot of companies didn't even know what they were putting in. Like, say they said they'd put sugar in, or sugar was extracted with a genetically modified enzyme.
Samantha Jewel:
So it's kind of instrumental in cause of all that actually influencing a lot of the really major companies in removing those things from because I'm sure I wasn't the only person, but it became like, oh, this company is doing this. This is a family restaurant. And so, yeah, I kind of got started down that. And the reason I I then went to organic was there was nobody doing paddock to plate methodology or or looking at it. And, obviously, we couldn't not only could we not afford to put it into every food line, but we put over the course of time, I put quite a lot of stuff in, and I obviously became more and more, involved with the farming methodologies and what was going on.
Samantha Jewel:
About 2,005, I was at one of I was paid by my family to go all over the world for all the conferences. So I got, like, a little mini PhD by the way I was I was doing it, but it was sort of self educated. But I found at one of the conferences, there was the Australian of the Year, and he was saying, you know, you're organic farmers. You're the single greatest solution to the climate. And they're all like, what?
Samantha Jewel:
And they said, because you requested the most amount of carbon, you put the carbon back out of the atmosphere and into the ground. And so it was kind of that, like, epiphany moment. I was so fed up with the infighting and the organic the different paradigms about how you do something. And I thought, this is it. This is the solution because it's annulment.
Samantha Jewel:
It's in everything. So how you get there? I'll leave it to the farmer. I'm not the farmer. I don't know how to do it.
Samantha Jewel:
Mhmm. Probably do know how to do it now, but let's just say I don't know how to do it. And, I went down this rabbit hole, which I have literally never come out of, and I became the 1st person to buy soil carbon credit that got the Australian government recognizing it as a financial tool in 2006. And I went on to then watch them for 14 years. The debating, how do we measure this?
Samantha Jewel:
And it's pretty obvious, take shovel out, stick it to the ground. And if it's going black, that's carbon. That's about it, really. I mean, obviously, there's other factors to it, but it it becomes very obvious. And so I really have been on that bandwagon for a long time.
Samantha Jewel:
And so I do know that there is a big difference between a good credit and a bad credit and, and how to get that. And I I really kind of became obsessed with being that focal point, being that bridge between the city and the finance markets and the country and the farmers who don't know anything about finance markets or or not. They do. They know about agriculture, but not necessarily about this whole climate issue. Because then you'd have just as many people in the farming side as you would in the city side who say that climate doesn't even exist, which it does.
Samantha Jewel:
I mean, really, it does. It's just Mhmm. Put that one to bed and move on. But, I will say that agriculture has the single greatest capacity. So one thing we really do economically rely on and manage and have influence over that we can make the greatest impact on the climate because if everything went regenerative, actually truly regenerating the soils, we could soak up twice what we emit.
Samantha Jewel:
And I think a lot of people don't realize that because the agronomist measure only sort of where's your thing? About that deep 6 inches. They're really only measuring where the where the roots are of the plant. And that's that's their whole focus. It's about chemicals, what we do to make the cut the plant pump out of the ground.
Samantha Jewel:
But, actually, we measure a meter into the ground, and we work with farmers that have been developing carbon for many, many years. The plants, when allowed to do their thing with biodiversity, with root density, they actually take the carbon many meters into the ground. And that's kind of really where the agronomists and scientists have got it wrong because they only measure a very short distance. They don't realize capacity of the Earth to take it into the ground. So there is different ways of doing that, obviously, and does require change of mindset and therefore funding, which is where I come in, is trying to get that money across the line between the 2.
Samantha Jewel:
And we're we're very close to being able to do that. That was a long winded story, wasn't it?
Adam Larson:
That's quite alright. I mean, it was nice to kind of hear the trajectory of of your passion and, you know, kind of how you got there. And I think we could kinda just take a quick step back. Maybe you can define what a soil carbon credit is as opposed to other types of carbon credits because people listening might not under quite understand what we're talking about here.
Samantha Jewel:
Absolutely. And that's probably one of the biggest hurdles for a lot of people because most people think you say carbon, they say trees.
Adam Larson:
Mhmm.
Samantha Jewel:
And, and, obviously, trees are the simple thing to do because you can use look at them with a satellite. You don't have to go out. We go out and do soil cores, and then they take them to a laboratory. And it's it's kind of the Rolls Royce of carbon because of the, laboratory testing of it and the depth and quality of it. So
Adam Larson:
Yeah. Yeah.
Samantha Jewel:
You're looking at stable carbon that will be there for, you know, a lot longer than a tree grows, and you've got to say and you say, oh, we've got this whole 25 year thing on it. It's like, well, look, if you got the carbon into the ground at depth, you've spent a bit of time getting it there anyway. And you don't want to get rid of it because the carbon actually provides a whole raft of reasons why once it's in the soil, it actually improves everything. So it's not something a farmer wants to get rid of. In fact, people buy land based on how good the carbon is without realizing it because they just call it good soil.
Samantha Jewel:
And and that's it is geological factors. That's the minerals and rocks that are in it. So the difference between, let's say, an energy credit, a lot of that is what I call mitigation. It's like I won't put carbon into the atmosphere. So that would be biochar.
Samantha Jewel:
That would be, you know, I, redo reducing things, turning lights off. You're reducing your bill. You're putting in renewables, which are not emitting carbon to create energy. These are all things that probably people are more familiar with. But when you're talking actually reversing the climate, you're talking about taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
Samantha Jewel:
Well, people only probably know about carbon catcher, which is a little bit of a furphy because the enormous amount of energy that it takes to create it and plants do it in simple days breath. Mhmm. So it seems a bit ridiculous to spend all that money on a machine when if you put that same money into farmers, you would achieve it within a few seasons. Because, obviously, it only really is is happening in the growing season when the plant is growing and taking the carbon into it to photosynthesize. That's the simplicity of it.
Samantha Jewel:
Mhmm. So does is that clear enough differentiation?
Adam Larson:
Yeah. No. I think that's pretty clear. I I like that differentiation. It's beautiful how the earth has created, how growing seasons are different on different parts of the world.
Adam Larson:
You know? And so when one season is done, then the other part of the season is grabbing the carbon from their side. So it's a it's a really kind of a beautiful thing the way you described it. So as we're a podcast, you know, for accounting and finance professionals, and you've talked to many different CSOs, you've had to educate CFOs, different businesses. You know, what are some of the big challenges that you've encountered as you try to educate these teams saying, hey.
Adam Larson:
This is important. You need to pay attention.
Samantha Jewel:
Well, because it's a lot of money, and people don't really wanna do it in the first place.
Adam Larson:
Yeah.
Samantha Jewel:
Every region is different because a lot of the I mean, the main people buying carbon are really big multinationals, so they're dealing with every region. And the regions themselves have different rules. So some might say, we only do carbon that is sequestered in our in our nation, or we only do carbon that is under our rules, or and that's very hard because you might be growing it under a particular methodology or paradigm, and it's there is no international standard. So getting, a CFO up to being willing to spend money on it is problematic because they know nothing about the science. And so they've gotta bring a science person on who can understand what you're saying and translate it into their local standard.
Samantha Jewel:
And most of them just say, that's all too hard. I just want the box ticked, and I don't think about it. And that's a problem in itself because some of the companies that I won't name have been that are predominantly used in America have been, you know, corrupt. They've been, you know, saying tree selling trees that weren't there effectively and using different maps. And so we were we're using a much more rigorous system.
Samantha Jewel:
And, so, actually, it's it's it's much more like, yes. We've truly sequestered the cap, and there's I think the other things to be aware of is that whilst the CFO may not understand how to get there or how to do the science, they they have to sort of, I suppose it's about developing relationships, like with everything. And why do these podcasts? It's about you need to know who I am and how can you trust me. So I've been doing this a long time.
Samantha Jewel:
I'm a true OG in the carbon space. And, I work now with, a wonderful guy out of the UAE, and I'm looking at relocating over there at the moment, who's been doing this for a long, long time. So it's it it it talked to big business and and and translating my passion speak into financial speak for them. And that primarily the big thing we're we're seeing is that scientific education and getting that across the line into a way in which they can understand it that meets their metrics. So, basically, the CFO has their own boxes to tick mainly around ESG and, you know, where the e and the ESG, but the s and the g are also I mean, obviously, governance is the big part that we that we do already in it.
Samantha Jewel:
And I suppose the big s part of it, the social part of this whole thing is that if you don't get the simple concept that farms are being turned into big agribusiness and humans are leaving the land at a massive rate, so we've got in my lifetime, it's gone from 2 thirds globally, lived on the land and and worked the land, and 1 third were in the cities. It's now 5050, and they're saying within a few years, it'll be 2 thirds in the cities and 1 third on the on the land. Now the problem with that is that that means machines are doing everything. Agribusiness is doing it. You've gotta be huge to stay in the market.
Samantha Jewel:
Food is incredibly cheap. And what is going out in all that is nutrition, nutrients, food security, and carbon, and water. So because we're destroying soils, because agribusiness almost can't do it right, I just haven't seen them do it well. And because they don't walk the land, because land isn't homogeneous. It's different everywhere.
Samantha Jewel:
And a farmer with a smaller amount of land actually is physically walking the land and getting out of his tractor and looking at the land and work working with it, where a big agribusiness is working pretty much on robotics. Everything is chemically sprayed, and it's it's more problematic because it's harder for them to embrace the concept that weeds need to be there. There's a reason for them. There's a whole lot of other factors that come involved. And I think it's where you see diseases increasing not just from bad diet, but, I mean, some people eat very well, and they source all their ingredients well.
Samantha Jewel:
But the nutrients, even in organic agriculture, are not in the soil anymore. They're just not there because of this destruction of this atmospheric everything exchange. So I hope to tell you that I said said that simply.
Adam Larson:
No. I think that's a you you you're definitely a great educator in explaining why we need to care about it. And I guess the the next question I would have, you know, for a CFO of you know, let's say they're a CFO in some industry that doesn't connect it. They don't think it's connected to agribusiness at all, and they're like, well, okay. So how does like, why would a soil credit be a part of my my company's ESG strategy, but we don't even touch those those aspects of the land?
Adam Larson:
Maybe we can help break down those barriers a little bit.
Samantha Jewel:
Yeah. So, obviously, it's more easy for somebody who has a supply chain connection. And in Europe, for instance, they've just passed a new I think it's a tax law. I'm not sure which law it is, but they've just passed a law where a business that has a direct supply chain can claim, putting investing money into that supply chain to get it to carbon neutral so they can actually have that as a tax write off. I don't think it's in America that's only in a few places.
Samantha Jewel:
And but and a lot of the arguments about it are well, is the business getting to net zero themselves? So say you're a steel factory and you're wherever you are. You will do whatever you can to reduce your energy and the the simple points, but they might get to a certain point where you literally there is no other technology. There's no other way you can reduce your carbon. Mhmm.
Samantha Jewel:
So you have to buy some carbon offsets to offset that gap between what you've got left over. And the point is that by buying a soil carbon credit, you are buying a direct impact onto the land that is, no matter which way you look at it, supporting you. It's supporting you atmospherically. I mean, it's it is all related. So it doesn't matter which industry you're in, the earth is something you're on and is you're a part of no matter where you are.
Samantha Jewel:
We are actually all interconnected. So it doesn't matter which industry you're in. If there isn't a direct correlation to your supply chain, you can buy a soil carbon credit, and it is related to what you're doing because it cannot be. I mean, you breathe and you eat. Both of them are involved.
Samantha Jewel:
You have staff. You have, you know, there's just no way you're not involved in it.
Adam Larson:
Yeah. I I see. I I really see what you're saying. So the ROI is a healthy people and a healthy earth. Is that the ROI?
Adam Larson:
Because from a business
Samantha Jewel:
perspective Look. You can if you wanna go just from that sort of social aspect, yes. Yeah. You can as well. You are going to be if let's say you're a business and you trade, I mean, it's probably more difficult for a business that's only working within its local area.
Samantha Jewel:
But at this point, it's really only major businesses that are affected by the global laws that are occurring. So my understanding is Trump has pretty much said, forget it. Climate change doesn't exist, and I'm gonna get that gold oil. I mean, I've heard him on his talks. And that's that's fine.
Samantha Jewel:
But a lot of businesses in America and other were trade internationally. And so the most important thing is, well, if I'm in one country which says, is that net zero, and you're in another country, which is an unbeliever, you will have a tax on what you are importing. They will either not take it, the product, because it hasn't got those carbon credits already embedded in it, or you will be, you know and you or you'll be taxed against it, or you might just not even be able to trade with people because they've made some policy around that. So it it's pretty important for a business to weigh all those things up and, to see if they don't do it, where that cost is gonna come in for them down the line. And, if they they buy carbon credits, which the other big thing to be aware of is there's not that many of them around.
Samantha Jewel:
Right now, we have, you know, whilst it's difficult to get across the line in terms of CFOs understanding it, we have 1,000,000,000 of tons being requested of which there just isn't that many. I mean, it takes a year to develop carbon to the ground and do all the measurements and all the auditing and all the, you know, to stop. So there's no greenwashing. But there is not that many carbon credits. So if you're a business that is seeing the light, you wanna get ahead of it.
Samantha Jewel:
You can trade carbon credits. You can put them in the carbon market and, you know, cover your cost on them. You can, you know, you can buy a surplus trade sum and offset what you need for yourself. You can store them for the next year or, you know, because the price might be going up there just like every other market. They have their own market volatility.
Samantha Jewel:
So, obviously, the difficult thing with that is that at this point is there isn't an international framework. So you'll have I know there's a lot of carbon credits coming out of, say, Africa, where you say, well, how authentic is the on the ground? Like, whenever there's, you know, difficulty in the governance of something, you can't the value becomes different because you're you're saying, well, who's you've gotta have some other methodology that's valuing it and putting insurance in it. And so there there are a lot of other factors that are coming in to try and get around the fact that there is no global framework for us. And I've been I'm trying to sell a very different carbon credit to, let's say, the Australian carbon credit unit, which is a 25 year credit.
Samantha Jewel:
I'm selling a 1 year commodity credit, which the CFO can write off on their books and put as an asset as opposed to a 25 year forward promise, which is a derivative. So and I believe the SEC just recently called the carbon credits derivatives because they're a forward promise. But I am selling a 1 year credit, which doesn't have that, problem. And the way I try and explain it to people is to look at it as a fractionalized credit. So because it's not you know what?
Samantha Jewel:
I mean, the 25 year credit is, say I don't know. In Europe, they're selling for between €60.80 a ton, and an Australian common credit sitting today at around 35 Australian dollars of credit. So they're all different Mhmm. Based on different rules. And and I we're selling one that's probably around 10 US dollars a credit, but it's a 1 year credit, and it's got a lot more rigor around it.
Samantha Jewel:
And because it's measured every year, there's a lot more expense in it. It's not every 3 years or 5 years, and the farmer actually enters it. And they have to they have to offset their own footprint as well before they sell them. And there's this whole discussion about methane, which is I'm not gonna go into, but it's it's actually not accurate the way it's measured. Some people have got a cow inside like Holland, and others have got them out on the ground walking, and it's very different amelioration of the cow, but in in the methane in that.
Samantha Jewel:
Anyway, that's another subject.
Adam Larson:
That's that mean that seems like a a lot to keep track of. And and you approach you you connect with, you know, carbon credits across all the different regions. How do you manage the, like, okay, this in Europe, this in US, this over here in Asia, this in Africa? Like, how do you manage the different all the different rules? Because there's no global standard, as you've said already.
Samantha Jewel:
Yeah. Look, the big thing really is to talk to each market. And then I mean, a ton of carbon is a ton of carbon. You know, like, it it's kind of ridiculous. You know, we'll have, say, the European market saying, well, how did they grow it?
Samantha Jewel:
What grasses were they growing? What and it's like it's kind of irrelevant. They could be an agribusiness doing it with high chemical. I believe they wouldn't be able to achieve it. But let's say they did.
Samantha Jewel:
You that isn't the point. The point is if they've got a ton of carbon, they've taken out of the atmosphere, it's in the ground. How they got it there is not actually relevant. But at this point, it's all about the story because there isn't everywhere laws, they want the PR thing, so you might have to represent the information. Whereas there are some like Stella McCartney, the company in, England, the McCartney daughter has a whole fashion label.
Samantha Jewel:
She sources her wool and sends her executives out to one of my farms in West Australia to actually talk to the farmer and learn what they're doing on the land. And that's there's such a desire to not have the greenwashing. People are really hanging on themselves to do the research. So, you can do that. Absolutely.
Samantha Jewel:
In fact, we encourage it. All of our farmers will welcome any exec that wants to come out and look at what they're doing. So, and and I suppose even with farmers throughout America that I know, they are, upset about the greenwashing to the degree that they don't even wanna enter the carbon market. So there is a lot of education still to go both sides to get that across the line because there's always charlatans everywhere. There's always snake oil salesman.
Samantha Jewel:
So you've kinda gotta work with that. I worked through the Bitcoin thing thinking blockchain was the best thing in the world, so I'm very aware of these different parameters that have to be traversed in these different regions. And you look. We just work with client 1 on 1 and and basically design what they need. So some of them are are more difficult because you gotta go back to the farmer and say, look.
Samantha Jewel:
You've gotta give us all these records. When did you plant? When did it get to this stage? When did it get to that stage? Have you got any visuals on it?
Samantha Jewel:
And some of them might make be able to meet those metrics. And so we're kind of learning as we go Mhmm. What each market wants and then going, Laura, I've gotta do this from the beginning. We've gotta actually gather all this data as we go. So it's still a bit of a learning curve for us as well.
Adam Larson:
So when somebody purchases a carbon credit, where does that money go? Does it go back to the farmer eventually? Like, how does how does that help?
Samantha Jewel:
Yes. So, I mean, there's because of all the legal things and international stuff, there is, you know, like, you're trying to get as little of a chunk, you know, the majority of it to the farmer. But it's been hard because every time we go through another intermediary, they wanna clip. And so you're it's very hard to keep that. And some of the protocols are on you know, you know, we want direct.
Samantha Jewel:
And I I got into the blockchain space in 2017, 18 to be able to do an an exchange that was directly from the buyer to the farmer with a very small clip. And I just caught more and more and more and more regulation on my part that was beyond my capacity financially to meet. And then I was like, oh, I've gotta go through an exchange. So then it was you know, I'm just saying each one has added something, and I've taken nothing in 27 years. So I'm like, I'm just it's it's I'm passionate about the time we're getting the majority, but I am very, very aware that there is why there is a percentage cut in all of that because of how expensive it is to do, to measure, to audit, to fit with all the regulations, etcetera, etcetera.
Samantha Jewel:
But our goal with the one we're working on is 80% of the farmer. Mhmm. So and, obviously, that that's where blockchain and smart contracts and auditing can really come in because you can put everything into the blockchain at every stage to get that transparency.
Adam Larson:
Yeah. And utilizing the technology to help reduce your overhead to make sure that the most of the cost, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to set it up that way. So you wrote a book, carbon is not a dirty word.
Samantha Jewel:
Yes. I've got it here. There it is.
Adam Larson:
Yeah. That's Carbon
Samantha Jewel:
is not a dirty word.
Adam Larson:
Carbon is not a dirty word.
Samantha Jewel:
And I'm very proud of it because I actually hate writing books. But I wrote the book because my business partner said, like, he was running into all this trying to sell the carbon. There's such a problem. The, you know, the financial people just don't understand it. You need to write a book because you know so much.
Samantha Jewel:
So I did that. I wrote the book, and I was trying to keep it really simple. It's a 4 hour read. You can buy it on my website, samjewel.com, or my business one, earth, u r t h. Io, which I think is on my screen.
Samantha Jewel:
And, it's the greatest thing I have to say is that I gave it to a farmer who said, read a book in 30 years, I'll never read a book. And then he rang me twice to say, one, that he'd actually got halfway through and he'd only spent 2 hours. He said and then the second time when he rang me, he just said, I wanna ring you this out. Didn't think I could learn anything more about the land, and you've changed my way my totally changed the way I look at agriculture. And that's from a farmer who'd been in his whole life in the sugarcane industry.
Samantha Jewel:
So I was kind of like that just moved me completely. So it's like my ultimate goal is to be able to get someone who really doesn't understand to get the simplicity of why the soil is the solution to everything. No matter whether you're an accountant or a CFO sitting in a business in New York or you're a Mhmm. Farmer out in the middle of the boondocks. Why that is so important?
Adam Larson:
I think it's great. You know, I encourage everybody to check out the links in the show notes to, check out, Sam's books and, her, her website and her organization, to keep the conversation going because we need to keep educating ourselves. Obviously, this is a very emerging market, and I love that you're at the forefront or at the having this conversation now. I think it'll be interesting if we had this conversation again a year from now. You know, what do you think that conversation would be?
Adam Larson:
What would what we'll be looking at then?
Samantha Jewel:
Big thing I think that will happen is that there will be more look. I think eventually, COP might get there where they get to a point where they come with the framework. They they did have some movement on the voluntary market frameworks. As I understand it, I've been kind of watching I'm not there this year, but I've been just watching the sort of LinkedIn posts from people in the voluntary market saying, oh, they made a bit more progress on it. So I I do think eventually that will happen.
Samantha Jewel:
The big problem is that, obviously, a lot of nations have got less, progress than others. And so they don't want to be hindered by that because countries that moved ahead actually had their GDP affected because they were had they had that money used to go somewhere. So it goes into the whole cost of things. And if you're trading with other nations and they go, well, I can go and get it cheaper over a year, you miss out. And so that's really been a big problem.
Samantha Jewel:
I mean, people have had to pull back and others are moving forward, and we're kind of helping work with nations, advising them how to put frameworks in that will bring them up to scratch with international standards. And I think that as they get there, the ESG laws will be the big thing that'll change. That's already started. The UAE had their, ESG laws come in 1st July, and they're scrambling. They need to know what their footprint is.
Samantha Jewel:
I think there's an estimated $30,000,000,000 globally being spent on footprint analysis loan. So it's it's a huge market even in the analysis space, which obviously the CFO is intrinsically involved with because they have to do it. I I must say that when I I spent a year ringing the CFOs, through through LinkedIn, and not only did they not know that when I read their, what's that document? Anyway, they have to put a sustainability document out. It was all social.
Samantha Jewel:
There was no understanding of the e part. There was maybe a mining industry might talk about what they've done with new equipment or industry stuff, and but they never talk about offsets because there's this whole viewpoint that it's just letting the polluters pollute rather than understanding they've gotta reduce first. So I I think that that will get there. I just think it's a matter of time.
Adam Larson:
Mhmm.
Samantha Jewel:
It's trade that will move it. It's the and it's the money markets. The other big thing that's really affecting it is if you're a business seeking money, if you don't have your ESG stuff together and your carbon net together, you just won't get money. And, really, that's what will move everything because everyone's looking for money. And if you don't have a credit score or or, like, a carbon score or rating, whatever they call it, that will make a big difference to business in business expansion.
Samantha Jewel:
So I I just think as that trickles in, that'll become very good. It would be normal.
Adam Larson:
Well, I think that's a great, place to end it. Samantha, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I've learned a lot. I hope our audience has learned, and I encourage them to keep the conversation going and keep learning about, this emerging market. Thank you so much.
Samantha Jewel:
And please feel free to reach out, and we can help you with your ESG strategy and planning as well.
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