By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media
In a move to bolster sustainable agriculture in France, ReSoil, has secured €4 million in funding from a mix of institutional and private investors. Key backers include Banque des Territoires, InvESS Île-de-France Amorçage and Generali Investissement à Impact, with the latter two funds overseen by impact investor INCO Ventures. Founded in 2022, ReSoil focuses on enabling farmer transitions to regenerative ag by covering the costs of adopting new practices, minimizing farms’ environmental impact and recognizing the value of farmers’ sustainable efforts and results.
ReSoil’s approach knits together several strands of the transition story on French farms. The company tracks both the carbon footprint and biodiversity impacts of farming practices, layers in technology and tailored advisory support for farmers, co-ops, traders and agri-food groups, and channels income back to farmers. Taken together, those components are meant to help build a more resilient, lower-impact agriculture sector that can better withstand climate shocks.
Resoil Co-Founder Grégoire Alston explained, “With ReSoil, we will be able to give farmers financial visibility by guaranteeing them upfront income, which they desperately need to change their practices. But we will also give agricultural sectors the tools to measure and track their decarbonization with transparent calculation methodologies compatible with international carbon accounting standards. Finally, we will enable all French companies to act locally to capture carbon in French soils, and to show their customers, employees, and investors the concrete impact of their climate investment.”
ReSoil now plans to scale up its regenerative agriculture projects by offering farmers greater certainty around income. The company bolsters income amounts in response to improvements in the sustainable performance of each farm while it refines its ReSoil Carbon tool to better fit the needs of different production systems and value chains.
The new funding will also help ReSoil widen its reach, upgrading its digital platform and adding features that make carbon project management simpler for farmers and their partners. In doing so, the company aims to ensure farmers are more fairly rewarded for their environmental efforts through several mechanisms. In certain agricultural segments, this translates to premiums directly tied to verified reductions in on-farm emissions. To monitor and confirm these decarbonization efforts, ReSoil draws on emission factors certified under ISO 14067 and in line with GHG Protocol and SBTi FLAG standards.
Over the past few years, ReSoil’s approach has evolved out of real-world testing in the fields and ongoing input from partners and stakeholders, allowing it to expand. Today, the company is ramping up, helping farmers shift practices across over 100,000 hectares through its ReSoil Carbon program, with 40,000 hectares engaged and another 60,000 in the pipeline with cooperative partners, with everything monitored right on the platform.
ReSoil’s digital tool is built to make decarbonization efforts in farming and soil carbon storage simpler. It handles accurate measurements of greenhouse gas emissions and soil carbon levels, keeps tabs on farm progress in real time, improves farming practices to slash emissions and rewards farmers’ efforts with certified carbon credits or premiums in agroecological supply chains. The current projects are on track to cut or sequester more than 300,000 tons of CO2. Since tapping into corporate funding last year, ReSoil has scaled to handle dozens of business clients who have committed a combined €3 million-plus to back the transition to more holistic agriculture practices.
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