WORKING TREES, INC — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.6

Description

Working Trees (WT) is a climate-tech startup incubated at Stanford University that enables pasture owners of any size to generate carbon revenue on their property when they incorporate productive trees onto their land - a practice known as silvopasture. While not a well known practice today silvopasture has been shown to improve the profitability of pasturelands while making these systems more resilient to climate change sequestering carbon and enhancing the environment. WT has built a new technology for measuring and verifying silvopasture carbon stocks: a mobile app that uses the camera and lidar in a producer's smartphone to cheaply and accurately measure carbon sequestered in silvopasture systems. Working Trees' SBIR project goal as part of SBIR's Rural and Community Development topic area is to commercialize its existing prototypes to meet the overwhelming interest pasture owners have for silvopasture carbon projects evidenced by the 100000+ acres of interest in the WT pipeline. The commercialized application and backend system will catalyze silvopasture deployment on pasture owners properties through 1) silvopasture system design assistance 2) accurate and low cost monitoring and verification of carbon sequestered in silvopasture systems and 3) producer payments for carbon sequestered in silvopasture systems. Working Trees has already deployed the first silvopasture carbon project in the US and with the SBIR Grant it will build and align the necessary technical infrastructure to scale this practice across the Eastern US reforesting millions of acres of land while improving the economic stability of thousands of family farms.