20 L Rickards
Droste et al. (2020, p. 1) put it: ‘soil carbon provides farmers with a natural
insurance against climate change through a gain in yield stability and more
resilient production.’ Soil is positioned here as not only a form of infrastructure, but a form of natural insurance, underlining how – consistent with
wider capitalist processes – nature is being enrolled into human climate
responses as not just threat but tool.
Commercial insurance features within these agricultural soil carbon efforts
in characteristically heterogeneous ways. Insurance companies and banks
encourage farmers to better adapt their farms to harsher climates and, like
others, are beginning to explicitly advocate better soil management as part of
this, given it helps protect them against insurance payouts and loan defaults
(Kane et al. 2021). At the same time, there is a tension between commercial and ‘natural insurance,’ with farmers protected by the latter (i.e. healthy
soils) showing less interest in commercial products such as crop insurance
(Jørgensen et al. 2020). Nevertheless, formal carbon sequestration schemes
represent an insurance opportunity, and insurers now offer insurance to those
taking on soil carbon sequestration contracts, given that (as with other forms
of geoengineering) there are uncertainties about the permanence of soil’s
carbon removal services, particularly given more frequent and severe disturbances to soil under climate change in the form of droughts, floods, wind,
and fires 2 .
A less recognised but highly influential way that the insurance industry
is involved in soil-based geoengineering is as a major owner and even
manager of farmland. For instance, Canada’s largest insurer, Manulife
Investment Management Company, invests funds for a large number of
retirement funds. It owns Hancock Natural Resource Group (HNRG),
which in turn owns farmland across North America and Australia,
actively managing about half of it (Fairbairn 2020). Hancock was one
of the first insurance-based asset managers to turn to farmland and help
make it into the sought-after ‘asset class’ it is today (Fairbairn 2020;
Ouma 2020). Key to this conversion was farmland’s appeal as a secure
investment relative to financial stocks, giving it an insurance-like quality for investors (Fairbairn 2020). Also important were improvements in
managing the downside risks inherent to agriculture, especially under
climate change. While institutional farmland investors rarely intend to
own the land into perpetuity in the way many farm families do, as indicated above they are increasingly recognising the importance of good soil
management, not the least to meet social and legal expectations. HNRG,
for instance, now encourages its farm managers to practice (some) regenerative farming techniques as a way of delivering its investors ‘enhanced
farmland value’ and helping the company demonstrate responsible investing (HNRG 2020, p. 5).
Insurers, other investors, ‘carbon farming aggregators,’ and other consultants are all working to assemble international soil carbon markets, pulling soil out of the dull light of the rustic into the bright light of modern
Droste et al. (2020, p. 1) put it: ‘soil carbon provides farmers with a natural
insurance against climate change through a gain in yield stability and more
resilient production.’ Soil is positioned here as not only a form of infrastructure, but a form of natural insurance, underlining how – consistent with
wider capitalist processes – nature is being enrolled into human climate
responses as not just threat but tool.
Commercial insurance features within these agricultural soil carbon efforts
in characteristically heterogeneous ways. Insurance companies and banks
encourage farmers to better adapt their farms to harsher climates and, like
others, are beginning to explicitly advocate better soil management as part of
this, given it helps protect them against insurance payouts and loan defaults
(Kane et al. 2021). At the same time, there is a tension between commercial and ‘natural insurance,’ with farmers protected by the latter (i.e. healthy
soils) showing less interest in commercial products such as crop insurance
(Jørgensen et al. 2020). Nevertheless, formal carbon sequestration schemes
represent an insurance opportunity, and insurers now offer insurance to those
taking on soil carbon sequestration contracts, given that (as with other forms
of geoengineering) there are uncertainties about the permanence of soil’s
carbon removal services, particularly given more frequent and severe disturbances to soil under climate change in the form of droughts, floods, wind,
and fires 2 .
A less recognised but highly influential way that the insurance industry
is involved in soil-based geoengineering is as a major owner and even
manager of farmland. For instance, Canada’s largest insurer, Manulife
Investment Management Company, invests funds for a large number of
retirement funds. It owns Hancock Natural Resource Group (HNRG),
which in turn owns farmland across North America and Australia,
actively managing about half of it (Fairbairn 2020). Hancock was one
of the first insurance-based asset managers to turn to farmland and help
make it into the sought-after ‘asset class’ it is today (Fairbairn 2020;
Ouma 2020). Key to this conversion was farmland’s appeal as a secure
investment relative to financial stocks, giving it an insurance-like quality for investors (Fairbairn 2020). Also important were improvements in
managing the downside risks inherent to agriculture, especially under
climate change. While institutional farmland investors rarely intend to
own the land into perpetuity in the way many farm families do, as indicated above they are increasingly recognising the importance of good soil
management, not the least to meet social and legal expectations. HNRG,
for instance, now encourages its farm managers to practice (some) regenerative farming techniques as a way of delivering its investors ‘enhanced
farmland value’ and helping the company demonstrate responsible investing (HNRG 2020, p. 5).
Insurers, other investors, ‘carbon farming aggregators,’ and other consultants are all working to assemble international soil carbon markets, pulling soil out of the dull light of the rustic into the bright light of modern