Net zero and agriculture: Why Renat Heuberger joined eAgronom’s mission

Net zero and agriculture: Why Renat Heuberger joined eAgronom’s mission

Renat Heuberger is CEO and co-founder of Terra Impact Ventures, a strategy advisor and incubator in climate and nature tech. Renat is also the co-founder of South Pole, a carbon finance consultancy, and myclimate, Europe’s first carbon credits company. He works as Innovation Council for the Swiss government, serves on various boards, and has been elected Social Entrepreneur of Switzerland by the WEF’s Schwab Foundation and as Illuminem Top Voice on Carbon for 2025.

Heuberger holds a Master's in Environmental Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and completed the Social Entrepreneur Programme, ISEP, at INSEAD and Executive Education at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). Since the beginning of January, Heuberger has also been a member of our supervisory board.

We sat down with Renat to talk about his decision to join eAgronom, his ideas for our company, and where and how he sees the net zero and carbon market moving.

Happy reading!

What inspired you to join eAgronom, and how do you see your role contributing to our mission to help farmers through the transition to sustainable agriculture?

My inspiration comes from three different angles. One is climate science. We are not on track at all. We are not even on track to meet the two degrees Celsius target, and the question becomes clear - what options do we have left to make a difference? One of the largest potential still untapped globally is agriculture. It has a lot of potential to produce the same amount of products, even more products, in a much more climate-friendly way. It was a topic that has not been on the agenda of many, and eAgronom is one of the companies which can help change that.

eAgronom has a whole array of tools in the toolbox to help farmers farm more climate-friendly while reducing and removing CO2 in the process and increasing soil health, therefore becoming more resilient against climate change.

So, the first inspiration was that what eAgronom is doing is one of the biggest and most untapped opportunities for making a difference.

My second inspiration to join was that the potential to make a difference, both locally and globally. eAgronom started in Estonia, a country known for its advanced technology and the home of many farmers. It has grown from Estonia into Western Europe and other regions of the world. I'm fascinated by companies that start small on their home turf but grow globally. The potential of eAgronom is huge.

The third inspiration was the team. From the beginning, I was convinced that the team of eAgronom is precisely the kind of team you need to make a difference - we have knowledgeable, hardworking, fun-loving young people who are very committed to making a difference but are also business-savvy to be able to lift such a complex product.

Those are the three reasons I believe eAgronom is a great company, and I'm looking forward to supporting the team and the company wherever possible.

Having co-founded South Pole and led innovative sustainability projects worldwide, what lessons or experiences would be most valuable to eAgronom?

We've learned many lessons at South Pole. One is scaling up. It's not easy. It is challenging to deal with increasingly complex systems, especially if you're from a startup world where processes have been simple, and everybody trusts each other.

You're gradually coming into a situation where you need more processes and structures. You have offices around the world where the team members might not know each other personally, which can create misunderstandings and inefficiencies,. All that needs to be managed carefully.

Secondly, the more you work with external investors, the more interests, sometimes diverging ones, you have in a company, and as a management team, it becomes more and more important to be able to balance those interests, align people, be sure people are steady to the vision and the mission and that you reach your purpose and your goals together.

Based on your experience, what are the key challenges companies face when scaling carbon credit initiatives, particularly in agriculture, and how can they be addressed?

Farmers are our most valuable allies regarding food security, biodiversity and climate action. They work on the frontline, and they know better than all of us about the complex processes of natural ecosystems. . As we all know, farmers are under pressure in many places - income is not as high as it should be, and they depend on subsidies in many places. Many farmers are also under stress due to climate change, which doesn't help. We have geopolitical challenges; think about the war in Ukraine, which is disrupting agricultural supply chains.

It's a dynamic field in which you are introducing a new topic, namely removing carbon, which has to make commercial sense for the farmers; otherwise, it won't happen. Finding ways to ensure commercial viability, removing as much carbon as possible, and protecting biodiversity is a challenge - but a very exciting one.

Also, let's keep in mind that carbon farming is not cheap. Once again, it needs to make sense for the farmers. So, you need a specific minimum price per ton of CO2 removed. If you look at the global carbon markets, they are not in excellent shape right now. We have a lot of political headwinds against climate change in general and against carbon markets from different constituencies.

The price dynamics are a challenge because of the different price levels for carbon credits in the market, but I'm convinced that a company like eAgronom can persuade its customers about the quality of the product, the durability, and also the sustainable development components that our carbon credits do have.

So I'm convinced that if we calmly and clearly tell our story, we will be able to find buyers who proudly engage in these credits, also as a part of supporting a climate-friendly regenerative agricultural system in Europe and beyond.

What excites you most about the intersection of agriculture and carbon credits? How do you envision this industry evolving in the coming years?

I've been personally excited about carbon credits for many, many years. I learned about carbon credits shortly after the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in the late 90s. If you think about it, the scheme is fascinating. You are solving an environmental problem like climate change by giving a price to whoever can reduce or remove carbon.

From there, you let the private sector decide what is a fascinating, feasible way to do so. What it does is it gives a subsidy for doing good. If we can convince farmers to farm differently, for example, by using cover crops, reducing their tillage, or reducing the amount of synthetic fertilizer, we create direct benefits for the climate, and through carbon credits, we can subsidize the farmers for achieving these benefits.

What it means is that protecting the climate becomes a business case and that is very fascinating. If that works, we have the potential to turn around the way people are farming by the forces of market mechanisms.

It's a market-based approach to nudge people into farming differently, farming more healthily, and making money while doing it.

That I find fascinating, and I'm pretty sure that the future for eAgronom and its farmers will be successful.

Given the urgency of reaching net zero and the fact that removing carbon from the atmosphere is one way of doing that, how can collaborations between companies like ours and different leaders in the field, such as food companies, accelerate progress?

So, one interesting aspect here is that any company with a supply chain is under increasing pressure to not only look at its own carbon footprint but also calculate and manage its supply chain's footprint, so-called Scope 3.

There eAgronom can become an important player because eAgronom is not only helping farmers to remove carbon, it's also generating a lot of key data regarding the farms' climate impact.

So, not only do we have the data, but we are also becoming very valuable for any food company that needs to understand and calculate the carbon footprint in their supply chains. We also offer direct opportunities for food companies to decarbonize their supply chain by investing in eAgronom and our products.

Any food company can reduce its Scope 3 emissions and, therefore, also take suitable steps towards reaching its own net zero target. In this sense, the symbiosis between eAgronom and, particularly, the food and retail industry is very high.

What's your long-term vision for the role of carbon markets in combating climate change, and how do you see eAgronom contributing to that vision?

That's an excellent question and has been debated massively.  So, in theory, in an ideal world, carbon markets wouldn't even be needed because we would have global carbon pricing, and automatically, on every ton of CO2 that somebody emits, there would be a price. Automatically, there would be a commercial incentive to reduce costs and carbon emissions. 

There are some places where that works already. For example, the European ETSs have a system like this for the European heavy industry.

The problem is that globally, such pricing is very patchy, and as we can see now with the new presidency in the US, carbon pricing is not quite on the rise.

In the absence of a global carbon price mark, voluntary carbon markets still play a significant role to go where legislation hasn't gone yet.

For example, agriculture right now is not yet included in carbon pricing.  So it makes a lot of sense that companies like eAgronom anticipate those regulations and make sure that also, in the agricultural sector, farmers can benefit from carbon pricing by changing the way they farm.

I hope that eAgronom and others in the space become so successful that governments will no longer have to start regulating carbon farming and carbon reductions in agriculture over time.

At that moment, eAgronom could morph its business model and become more of a company that produces all the data and monitoring infrastructure to ensure the new legislation is complied with.

That is something that I see happening in the future, in 10-20 years.

As someone who has worked on projects across diverse geographies, what unique perspectives or ideas do you hope to bring to our company?

I have been involved in projects in over 50 countries, which are very diverse, from the tropics to the Nordics, from East to West, and from North to South. Even if we always talk about farming and regenerative agriculture, one crucial topic is that not only is every country different in terms of its culture and geopolitical situation, but every farmer is also different.

Every farmer is a family with a history and its issues and joys..
It is always important to go back to the individual person and meet the farmers on the ground to understand what is driving them, and if they are happy with our product.We need to know from the people on the ground: What works? What doesn’t? What could we improve?

Ultimately, this is about human beings. It's about families, and eventually, our goal is to add value together with our farming partners and make sure they are making money and saving the climate at the same time.

For that, it's essential to have this combination of not only thinking global and big data but also thinking local, connecting on the ground with the people, and ensuring that our product really makes sense.