From farmer to food company, there is increasing market pressure for transparency across agriculture and food systems. Unfortunately, the existing supply chain has not been set up to offer this, so a transition to transparency will rely on data and technological solutions. One such solution is Merge Impact, founded in 2023 by Beth Robertson-Martin and Ben Adolph and committed to enabling ecosystem transparency in food and agriculture supply chains. RFSI has followed Merge Impact since they were founded and we recently caught up with Ben to see how things are going on their journey.

RFSI: Last time we caught up was about a year ago, tell us how things have been going since then?

Ben Adolph (BA): Brutal, but worth it. Fundraising in 2024 wasn’t fun so we stopped doing it to keep building and selling our product. We’ve made leaps creating partnerships and relationships with a few of the impressive MRV companies out there right now and we’re really excited about the evolution of Merge Impact.

 

RFSI: You launched a new platform in June – who does it serve and how? And how is it going?

BA: We launched the marketplace in June to serve buyers and sellers of products needing additional levels of impact verification, ecosystem assets (carbon, biodiversity, water) is the goal. Our target user is aggregators of production that is differentiated by ecosystem impact & human nutrition impact and anyone or any team doing sustainable sourcing. Each marketplace experience is customizable to the needs of the user. 

We launched for a couple reasons: 1) To actually launch a product after a couple years into the biz, and 2) to show the industry it’s possible to collect granular data, engage and incentivize producers, and differentiate their products in the market using data. Using tech, it’s possible to replicate this into scale.

Since then, we immediately went back to working on the analytics and reporting product, MiData, which provides users with the opportunity to have data collected by any of our MRV partners, organized, analyzed, reported and monetized using one platform. 

Currently, our Impact Dash users are downstream supply chain stakeholders needing to analyze/communicate/report ecosystem impact data about their supply chain. Producers in these supply chains have access to the dash for free, which comes with our other resources like conservation and habitat planning, sustainable agronomy feedback, analytics. 

Ben Adolph, co-founder at Merge Impact

 

RFSI: What are some of the fun or unexpected ways your tech platform is being used?

BA: We’re helping lead sustainability for the 2025 NCAA Men’s basketball tournament, so that’s an awesome and unexpected opportunity. Our CEO, Beth, is leading the biodiversity and water subcommittee which is in our wheelhouse. What we’re building is exciting and we’ll release it early 2025 – going to take event sustainability to new levels.

Merge also rolled out a product launch program with one of our service partners, Viiision. We’re starting out by launching agronomy products with digital engagement, product warranties, & ecosystem benefit claims. I dabbled in this early on at Merge but set it aside to focus on food systems. Much of this work is how we support food companies, but they have been slower to adopt resources that directly engage producers. Plus, the biologicals market has been hot. Our platform use does not change and I used to be an agronomist, so right now it’s a great way to drive revenue while maintaining our product focus. We’re still here to positively impact food and agriculture, so how we get that done doesn’t matter.

 

RFSI: For the company that is starting to feel the need to measure their ecosystem impacts and are searching for how to do this – what advice do you have on what they should consider in this process? On the other end, any advice for the farmer?

BA: Have someone on your side that keeps you informed and compliant with whatever methodology you want to follow – these change all the time. Then, make sure you have more than one data source to further strengthen the methodology and your stakeholder reporting.  

For the farmer: soil carbon and a lot of other data can be collected while doing a traditional soil sampling pass. Regarding other ecosystem impact, in late 2024 farmers can enroll their acres using our BEE tool. Once they do this we help them identify opportunities for biodiversity credits, collect carbon baselines, and install monitoring services to keep data accurate and timely. 

 

RFSI: The BEE tool sounds exciting! And promising in the sense that you will be helping farmers identify opportunities for biodiversity credits. I know biodiversity is important motivation for your work. How close do you think we are to getting farmers paid for the biodiversity outcomes that they steward?

BA: With our work with the NCAA, plus what we’re seeing in the biodiversity market, we’re months (not years) away from real, non-government incentives to producers for commitments to conservation and biodiversity enhancements. 

 

RFSI: You are working on the cutting edge of data management for the regenerative crop space – why are you so passionate about this and what are you most proud of to date?

BA: Our team. There’s no one like us and there’s no product like the one we built for this industry. When you work with Merge, we come with it. Unreasonable customer service from sustainable sourcing experts and people that want to do good for our planet.

 

RFSI: What is next for Merge Impact?

BA: We’re going to keep this freight train moving with feature releases, more product rollouts, some of which will change the game in ag data and ecosystem data. We have some huge projects and clients to work with coming up so gearing up for that and staying focused on bringing conservation back to agriculture. 

Stay tuned!