Grasslands Are Invaluable for Capturing Carbon, Says James Clement III

James Clement III, MBA ’21, a Texas rancher whose family has been raising cattle for 170 years, sees an invaluable resource below the surface of America’s grasslands that offers a natural way to combat greenhouse gas emissions: carbon.

The country’s grasslands protect carbon better than trees, which are declining in number because of forest fires, drought, and climate change, according to Clement, a graduate of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. “North American grasslands are the most important ecosystem in the world for capturing carbon more than anything else,” he said at a talk at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management on October 28.

Clement, a senior vice president and general manager of grass and rangeland at EarthOptics, a soil data measurement and mapping company, discussed how the science of measuring carbon in soil is not only mitigating climate change but is also creating an opportunity for farmers to monetize it on the carbon credit market.

Farmers are now selling carbon credits to companies such as Microsoft, Nestlé, and ExxonMobil to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. “It all boils down to a ton of carbon equals a credit, and that gets traded throughout the country,” Clement told a group of 245 freshmen enrolled in the introductory course AEM1101: Design Your Dyson.

Launching a new initiative at the Dyson School

Clement was the third speaker to visit the Dyson School this fall as part of the Thoreau Planetary Solutions Initiative, a new program aimed at supporting students who want to pursue careers in the sustainable business sector.

The project received a $40,000 grant in July from the Henry David Thoreau Foundation, a charitable trust that seed-funds visionary programs at U.S. institutions that foster environmental leadership, with undergraduate students as catalysts for change. The grant for the Dyson School initiative will pay for ten mid-career professionals to visit campus this fall and offer $1,500 grants each to ten students who obtain internships in the green workforce next summer.

Trent Preszler, a professor of practice at the Dyson School and director of the Dyson Leadership Program, said he developed the initiative and applied for the Thoreau Faculty Grant to introduce students to the wide range of careers in the sustainable business sector. “Climate change is now central to almost every economic challenge that we face,” he said. “And the solutions, I believe, are rooted in business.”

The ten speakers visiting the Dyson School this semester work in environmentally focused companies and nonprofits, including AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company that helped develop one of the Covid-19 vaccines, and Seneca Foods, a processor of fruits and vegetables in Geneva, N.Y.

Students taking AEM1101 are required to attend the lectures and write a reflection after the talk to discuss what they learned. Preszler, who co-teaches the course with David Lennox, a senior lecturer at the Dyson School, said several students at Clement’s talk wrote in their reflections that they knew nothing about agriculture or innovation in the industry before attending the lecture.

“Dyson students might think Big Tech starts and ends with Microsoft and Google,” Preszler said. “But now they have exposure to dozens, if not hundreds, of companies creating innovative tech solutions for agriculture, all with an eye toward climate resiliency. James Clement imparted to students the breadth of possibility in this field.”

Focus on agricultural sustainability

Preszler said he invited Clement to speak because his work is transforming the way farmers and ranchers measure carbon in their soil. Clement also has deep roots in agriculture: In 1853, his family founded King Ranch in South Texas, the largest ranch in the United States, covering an area bigger than the state of Rhode Island.

After working as a manager of the horse division at King Ranch, Clement became its land resources manager, handling carbon, solar, and other renewable business development projects. He began working with EarthOptics in 2023 after he saw the company conduct a soil carbon study.

Clement recalled telling the EarthOptics’ team: “You’ve got this really exciting idea and you guys are going to make money, but you’re going to have to talk to ranchers. You’ve got to get a middleman who is going to be able to translate what they’re talking about in the technical world and also the climate world as well.”

Clement created that position for himself at the company, which measures soil using a combination of advanced sensors, imaging, machine learning, and soil samples. With the data generated by the analysis, he said farmers can sell their carbon credits either by using insetting to market them to buyers working to reduce emissions within the agricultural industry, or by using offsetting to sell them to companies outside the industry.

After Clement’s talk, Kristen O’Shea ’28, a Dyson School student enrolled in AEM1101, asked him for advice on how to enter the sustainable agriculture industry. O’Shea is interested in the field because her family operated a dairy farm in Ireland, her native country.

“I think it’s super helpful to have speakers from every industry in business, not just the traditional investing, banking, and finance, but also from agribusiness,” she said. “If you don’t, people aren’t likely to know how to break into it.”