The National Science Foundation awarded $50,000 to Nathaniel Stern, a UWM professor of mechanical engineering and art & design, in February for an I-Corps project that could enable 5 million small-scale farmers worldwide to participate in the global carbon and ecosystem services markets.
The grant will allow Stern to develop and test a platform to collect, synthesize, and share verifiable carbon sequestration data from farmers who own only a few hectares.
Stern says it’s a step toward making it easy and profitable for these farmers to capture and sell carbon credits as they convert to more viable farming practices.
“Current carbon credit origination costs typically only make financial sense for farmers who own more than 1,200 hectares,” he says. The platform would financially support a small-scale farmer’s transition from traditional farming practices (e.g., monocrops and dependence on fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides) to regenerative ones (e.g., agroforestry, low-till, and using naturally nutritious, healthy soil).
Companies that purchase the carbon credits in order meet their own sustainability goals, he adds, would be supporting the restoration and protection of ecological assets.
Stern’s platform will include the use of smartphones, satellite and drone images, and remote sensing to verify changes to the ecological state that occur after a farmer begins a regenerative practice.
Highly competitive I-Corp grants help move the most promising STEM-based research and ideas from academic labs to society.
Stern co-founded his climate action startup, Eco Labs, with UWM alumnus Samantha Tan (BFA ’18) and her partner Sev Nightingale. It grew out of artistic research supported by UWM’s Office of Research and engineering-based research at UWM’s Lubar Entrepreneurship Center.