Expanding Regenerative Ag Adoption: A Case Study with Indigo Ag

Expanding Regen Ag Adoption

In an industry known for producing food, fiber, and fuel, Indigo Ag has been working to bring regenerative ag solutions to farmers for nearly a decade. They are known for their carbon program and biological seed treatments. They have made significant scientific advancements in the soil carbon accounting and emissions quantification space, creating novel approaches to collecting farm data, and developing effective endophytic seed treatments. However, like many organizations in this space, they have faced industry-specific challenges that threatened their ability to earn farmer trust and provide growers with implementation guidance when adopting regenerative ag farming practices and successfully generate carbon offsets and insets.

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Adoption Headwinds

The primary issue Indigo Ag encountered was encouraging adoption of advanced carbon farming and regenerative agriculture practices such as no-till, nitrogen fertilizer reductions, cover cropping, and more. Despite strong technical offerings, growers were hesitant to change.

This resistance stemmed from several intertwined factors: limited implementation support across the industry, a lack of trusted advisors who had successfully guided farmers through transitions, and a widespread gap in understanding how biological soil processes translate to field-level outcomes. Without clearly defined transition roadmaps, many growers felt like they were being asked to leap without a landing.

On top of that, there was uncertainty around outcomes, payments, and whether the promises matched the reality on their farms. Simply put, the program’s narrative didn’t fully align with the way growers make decisions, especially when livelihoods are at stake.

This disconnect led to poor adoption rates, fewer sellable credits per acre, and an incomplete picture of what truly motivates or holds back participation in carbon programs. Without deeply resonating messaging, trusted field-level guidance, and farm-grounded strategy, even the most well-intended programs struggle to gain traction.

Addressing the challenge

To tackle this critical issue, myself and others working on this project set out to better understand farm implementation barriers for adopting regenerative farming practices, which included several key steps:

Step 1: Identify adoption barriers and prioritize which barriers are: most concerning to farmers, short term business needs, and long term business viability.
Step 2: Create a product roadmap to define the scope, cost, and resources needed to alleviate slow adoption and equip growers to implement new farming practices based on step one findings.
Step 3: Develop a training course where growers, trusted advisors, academics, and industry reps can be trained on best management practices when implementing cover crops, no-till, and reducing fertilizer.

These strategic actions were planned and executed to directly address the problem by creating a service known as Carbon College where the target audiences could earn a carbon farming certification, Certified Crop Advisor (CCA) Continuing Education Units (CEUs), and learn how to successfully implement a regenerative farming plan, ultimately aiming to increase enrollment, encourage adoption of advanced practices, increase effect size, and earn trust within the industry.

The Results

As a result of these strategic interventions, software improvements and new enrollment Indigo Ag saw remarkable improvements.

They experienced a 5x increase in carbon credits from reporting period 1 to reporting period 2 and a148% increase from reporting period 2 to reporting period 3.

The platform has had over 2,000 users across all three seasons of carbon college and has since become a core component of the partner onboarding experience which was an added bonus from the original scope.

Moreover, the project helped Indigo move closer to their long-term goal of earning industry trust, increasing net effect size per acre, and equipping partners with necessary tools and insights to successfully scale regenerative ag adoption.

Your Next Steps

Are you facing a similar problem in your organization? Want to break adoption barriers, earn farmer trust, lower deployment costs, and hit your biggest goals, just like Indigo did?

Living Roots Ag offers a free consultation to help you identify what’s holding you back and how to move forward with clarity and confidence.

We help ag businesses turn complex adoption barriers into measurable results. Let’s do the same for you.

Contact us now by scheduling your free consultation:
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