WASHINGTON, Iowa — Mitchell Hora was already planning his business in the early stages of his college career, but the young farmer sent his first invoice much earlier than he expected.
“I was working on the Haney Soil Health Test and I met a company from South Africa who was trying to figure it out and had a bunch of data,” Hora said. “I told them to send me their data and I’d give some insight. They said thanks, just send us a bill. That was the initial launch.”
Hora started developing the idea for Continuum Ag during the summer of 2014 in the middle of a freshman internship while attending Iowa State University. After the instance with the company in South Africa, he officially launched the business in the fall of 2015, ahead of his graduation in 2017.
In addition to starting a business in college, he also double majored and had many other extra-curricular activities to balance. Everything was in preparation for his post-college career.
“I knew if I was going to not have to take a full-time job after graduation, I had to have Continuum up and running to a level that made sense,” he said. “I wanted to work for myself coming out of college. I had to have enough work to keep me busy and enough money coming into make it economically make sense.”
The company began as a crop and agronomy consulting business, with Hora saying they would give fertilizer recommendations, scouting, work with drones and soil testing. In the past six years, however, the company has evolved tremendously.
“We are not that at all today,” he said. “Today, we are a regenerative ag software company. I don’t do hardly any agronomic consulting at all, except for a few of our legacy customers.”
One of Hora’s focuses is on carbon intensity and helping farmers utilize the 45Z tax credit that will begin in 2025. The tax credit focuses on domestic production of clean transportation fuels and low-carbon generating crops.
“Hardly anybody is talking about it,” he said. “We have to shift our mindset away from voluntary carbon offset markets and evaluate our opportunity in regulated markets. Your carbon data and other environmental outcomes — that story and other environmental outcomes need to go with your product into the supply chain.”
Farmers may be familiar with voluntary markets, or carbon credits, provided by companies such as Indigo Ag. What Hora is describing is something provided by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that won’t go into effect until 2025, but work toward it can start now.
“As a farmer reduces their carbon intensity score and reduces the carbon footprint of the bushels they produce, the biofuel has a lower carbon intensity and a lower carbon footprint and a significant tax credit can be garnered by pursuing that.”
He said it is important that farmers take advantage of this situation as the credit is only currently slated to be available for two years. If not enough people take part in the program, it may not see continued funding.
“My concern is I want to make sure there’s a big enough pie and people aren’t giving away their data and getting their equitable share,” he said. “There’s plenty of pie to go around here and farmers need to get their share.”
