Acorn agroforestry

Farm Africa’s Acorn agroforestry project, launched in 2020 in partnership with Acorn, Rabobank and AGRA, integrates carbon-based incentives with sustainable agriculture.

The project supports farmers in Embu and Tharaka Nithi counties to adopt agroforestry, a technique that integrates trees into traditional farming systems. When trees grow, carbon is captured from the atmosphere and stored in trees. 

The Acorn initiative, short for ‘Agroforestry CRUs for the Organic Restoration of Nature’ creates Carbon Removal Units (CRUs). A CRU represents one tonne of carbon removed from the atmosphere. Acorn sells the CRUs to corporations that want to offset their unavoidable emissions and returns 80% of the revenue generated to the farmers. In this way, the Acorn initiative allows farmers to monetise the carbon stored in their trees and be financially rewarded for their contribution to mitigate climate change.

Farmers also benefit from the trees’ impact in reducing land degradation, improving soil fertility, conserving water, increasing biodiversity and improving crop productivity. Some of the trees also yield high-value crops like fruit and nuts, which further diversify diets and incomes.