Argentina has just issued its first grazing-based carbon credits  and the story behind them is forty years in the making. Pablo Francisco Borrelli, co-founder of Ruuts, has spent the last decade building the infrastructure to get farmers in Patagonia and beyond paid for what their land is actually doing: sequestering carbon, retaining water, and growing more grass than anyone thought possible.

The carbon credit is not the point. It is the door. Once a farmer steps through it and experiences what holistic management does for their land and their bottom line, the market can disappear and they won’t go back. This is a grounded account of what it takes to turn forty years of agronomic pioneering into a verified, sellable outcome and why the hardest part was never the science.

This episode is part of the Role of Animals in food and agriculture systems of the future series, supported and co-produced by the Datamars Sustainability Foundation.

HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IS NOT WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK IT IS

There is a version of regenerative grazing that is mostly about moving animals around. This misses the point. The difference between a farmer who rotates livestock and one who practices holistic management properly shows up not just in the grass but in how the farm family makes decisions, plans financially, and involves the next generation. It is a deeper change than most people entering this space are prepared for, and the conversation gets direct about where most farmers currently sit on that spectrum.

“Among regenerative grazing, you have the ones that think that just moving the cows is regenerating. No, you need to do a proper grazing plan with resting time so that there’s already a difference. And if you want to go deeper, there’s this whole approach from holistic management that has to do with a more general decision-making that changes the dynamics of the decision-making at the farm level, and that’s the most profound change that we see.” — Pablo Borrelli

GRAZING CARBON CREDITS ARE THE TROJAN HORSE, NOT THE DESTINATION

Ruuts spent years trying to sell regenerative outcomes bundled with commodities like wool and beef before concluding that carbon was the more direct route to getting farmers paid. The journey from that conclusion to Argentina’s first Verra-certified grazing carbon credits took several more years, a failed blockchain experiment, and constant cash constraints. The credit is not what this is really about. It is what gets a skeptical farmer to open the gate. What happens after that is what matters.

“For us, we see carbon markets and the carbon incentives as a Trojan horse. It’s opening doors. But then when we get into that farm and they learn the value of holistic management for their core business, even if tomorrow the carbon markets disappear, they won’t go back.” — Pablo Borrelli

THE UNCOMFORTABLE MATH OF MORE GRASS

Holistic management works. The grass comes back, and more of it. But under current carbon accounting rules, more grass requires more animals to keep it healthy, and more animals means more methane, which has to be discounted from the credits. There is also a broader question about what carbon measurement alone can and cannot tell you about whether a farm is genuinely regenerating. As the voluntary carbon market tries to distinguish high-quality projects from superficial ones, that question is becoming urgent.

“I think the missing piece is when you just focus on carbon. There are many other elements that, when you go to a well-managed farm, you can check, and that can tell you if that farm is actually regenerating. Just through the carbon lens, I think you can miss big pieces.” — Pablo Borrelli

Koen and Pablo also talked about:

• The forty-year journey from failed grazing advice to holistic management in Patagonia
• Why selling regenerative wool never scaled and what that taught them
• How BM42 verification works and why the remeasurement years are the real test
• The financing gap blocking early-stage carbon project development
• What Pablo would do with a billion dollars

MORE INTERVIEWS IN THIS SERIES:

• Ichsani Wheeler – We need more large animals in our landscapes
• Walking the land with Benedikt Boesel – Fully integrating 300 cows into a 1000-hectare arable very sandy farm
• Dianne, Ian and Matthew Haggerty – Food, not commodities: how regenerative agriculture works at scale on 63,000 acres
• Jonathan Lundgren – You need more cows, not fewer, to save the plane
• Alfonso Chico de Guzmán – The ag-tech that brings cows back
• Joe Tomandl – CAFOs have caught up, can regenerative dairy still win?

More about our guest:
Pablo Francisco Borrelli is co-founder of Ruuts, a company connecting regenerative grazing farmers across Latin America to carbon markets. Building on the agronomic work of his father, one of the pioneers of holistic management in Patagonia, he has spent the last decade developing the educational, field support, and verification infrastructure needed to translate regenerative outcomes into verified carbon credits. Ruuts recently issued the first grazing-based carbon credits in Argentina under the Verra BM42 methodology. Pablo is based in Bariloche, Patagonia.

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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.