Is the World Ready for a 21st Century “Bushel Basket”?

Thinking Outside the Bushel

The fragmentation of data and transactions is a major, costly barrier in ecosystem service markets. Each new market or program model only deepens this fragmentation, as noted by Eelco H. Dykstra in numerous scenarios. This begs the question: is this fragmentation an accidental byproduct of well-meaning efforts, or is it a deliberate business strategy?

Fragmentation as a Business Strategy

Fragmentation creates inefficiencies, raising costs and complicating processes for on-boarding and retaining customers. It does not promote the integration of shared data sets or outcomes. However, these inefficiencies can actually benefit businesses by creating barriers to competition. When a market or entity captures a client and their data, they effectively monopolize that relationship, as the cost and effort for a farmer to duplicate the process across multiple eco-markets is prohibitive. While this approach might not reflect good governance, it can be a profitable strategy.

It took years to fully understand why “sustainability” businesses often design for fragmentation. The answer is both simple and obvious: businesses prioritize solving their own problems over solving systemic sustainability challenges. Fragmentation is not always a calculated choice to serves one’s business goals but that is often the result. The recent closure of NORI is an example of a fragmented business strategy that brought in $17.5M of investment, but ultimately failed to deliver a viable business model.

Fragmentation as an Emerging Market Trait

Many people aim to resolve fragmentation, but it persists due to inherent characteristics of emerging markets. As Carlson’s Law states: “When emerging markets access cheap technologies, you get top-down innovation that is orderly and dumb, and bottom-up innovation that is smart and chaotic.” This dynamic inevitably leads to fragmentation.

The process is familiar: one organization or consortium defines its goals, creates a metric, and develops a market or program. Repeat this process thousands of times, and the result is a chaotic patchwork of disconnected initiatives — what could be called the “Muddled Middle.” Fragmentation, in this sense, is not just likely; it’s inevitable in immature eco-markets.

Lessons from History: The Grain Market Example

Prior to King Henry VII’s decree in 1495 to standardize the “bushel” as a unit of measurement, the grain market was fragmented. Farmers traded grain in whatever containers they had on hand — bags, boxes, or wagons — without a consistent standard.

The introduction of the bushel unified this fragmented system, enabling a global grain market to flourish. Without the bushel today, the grain market would descend into chaos. Its adoption demonstrates the power of simple, standardized units to defragment complex systems.

The bushel works because it functions as:

1. An economic and market unit (e.g., wheat prices are $6/bushel).
2. An ecological productivity metric (e.g., a field yields an 80 bushels/acre average).
3. A governance unit used by governments, institutions, and insurers to design policies, programs, and payouts.
4. And, of course, as a measurement unit.

The bushel’s simplicity allows it to address the complexity of socio-economic relationships, serving as a shared governance unit across public, private, and NGO sectors. Given centuries, markets forces can “design” a defragmenting unit.

Designing a “Geospatial Bushel Basket”

Eco-markets are more complex than commodity markets. Ecosystem services like pollination, carbon sequestration, and water purification are intangible, invisible, and location-dependent. This complexity requires a geospatial equivalent of the bushel: a standardized accounting unit to measure ecosystem services at a granular level that can be aggregated at the optimum scope and scale..

What would such a unit look like? Imagine placing a permanent “bushel basket” on every square meter of land, a natural capital unit, per se. Instead of measuring bushels per acre, we measure ecosystem services per NCU. Each NCU, or “landscape pixel,” can account for the natural capital stock (e.g., soil health) and the flow of ecosystem services (e.g., pollination).

This system allows us to aggregate and analyze natural capital and ecosystem services across any spatial polygon — whether it’s a field, a watershed, or an entire region. As eco-markets mature, this granular accounting becomes essential for managing and transacting ecosystem services.

Introducing the Terric©: A Geospatial “Bushel Basket”

The Terric is a conceptual accounting unit — a 1m x 1m “natural capital unit” (NCU) with four layers (climate, bio-physical, bio-processes, and geo-physical) representing unique natural capital capacities. Like the bushel, the Terric is a made-up measurement, but it’s logical and practical, designed to withstand the demands of buyers, sellers, and policy makers in ecosystem service markets.

The Terric simplifies complex systems by creating a universal unit for natural capital and ecosystem service accounting. This shared framework enables:

• Farmers to account for their (natural capital) land’s productivity and its multiple outputs (e.g., forage, carbon sequestration, water purification) using one accounting system.
• Buyers to identify demands and access consistent, geospatially linked data.
• Public and private sectors to design effective policies and programs.
• Scientists and policymakers to promote optimal ecosystem service metrics

From Supply Chains to Supply Webs

Most eco-markets today operate using a supply chain perspective, focusing on linear transactions (e.g., one buyer, one seller). This approach fails to account for the interconnected nature of provisional and regulating ecosystem services.

A “supply web” perspective, by contrast, acknowledges that ecosystem services operate across multiple scales and stakeholders that begins at the landscape. For example, a farmer’s field may simultaneously produce forage, sequester carbon, and support pollination — all of which are valuable to different buyers for different reasons. Aligning an economic model with how ecosystem services are generated and value is a critical first step in enabling eco-markets to mature.

Shifting the Perspective

The key to defragmenting eco-markets lies in creating a natural capital accounting system that recognizes the landscape-level interdependencies of ecosystem services. The Terric enables this shift, providing a foundation for integrated data and transactions.

When markets embrace this shared system, the fragmented eco-markets of today will begin to coalesce into a functional, scalable marketplace. But achieving this vision requires stakeholders to take a step back, define their individual problems, and align on a common accounting framework before rushing to market transactions.

The opportunity to defragment eco-markets starts here — with a landscape-scale perspective and a commitment to shared governance.

Information Needed for Defragmenting Eco-Markets: Part Two

To put the Terric and NCU accounting system to task, we need to understand the natural capital and ecosystem services values that suppliers think should be part of a marketplace transaction.

For example, in our landscape footprint pictured below, the following ecosystem services should be accounted for and should be part of the potential $T ecosystem service marketplace:

1. Forage (provisional ecoservice)

2. Carbon sequestration (regulating ecoservice)

3. Water cleansing (regulating ecoservice)

4. Pollination (regulating ecoservice)

5. Biodiversity/Habitat (supporting ecoservice)

Rotational Grazing System with Paddocks

The opportunity to defragment eco-markets begins with those individuals that produce the supply. The marketplace accounting system must be sensible and cost effective for the land managers and the professionals that assist them.

During the last three decades, governments, corporations, and NGOs have used their social licenses to create ecosystem service supply chain markets. Each one of these major efforts has failed to support the supply web accounting structure that begins at the landscape.

Part Two of this article will be written with the input of the supplier ecosystem of eco-markets.

Please consider sharing the full suite of ecosystem services (provisional, regulating, supporting, and cultural) that you can provide and that you think there is, might be, or should be markets for. I would be very interested in the perspective of Joni Kindwall-Moore , Gary Lewis , Clint Brauer , Dominic Sutton-Vermeulen , John Troughton , Remzi Bajrami , Aarti Shah , Yves Carnazzola , Colin Cureton , Adam Lobel , Michael Haupt , Conan Moynihan and others you recommend.

It makes sense that the Private Practitioners take their turn and in a very serious and dedicated manner. The work of the Public Policymakers, Private Policymakers, and Public Practitioners has provided a good sense of what is now needed.

The market demanders have given it their best attempts. They failed, not because they lack the resources, intelligence, or motivation, but because as demanders, there are not in the position to promote a supply web accounting system that begins at the landscape. Private practitioners have the tacit knowledge and access to the wealth of information and technology to make this finally happen. Any lessor approach feels a bit futile.

With a collective group of progressive individuals that prove out a Terric-based accounting system should be enough motivation to bring interest and investment in the first decentralized, farmer-centric natural capital accounting system and ecosystem service marketplace.

Author

Timothy Gieseke’ career path has traversed through government, private business, and non-government sectors while focusing on the common issue of landscape sustainability from ecological and economic perspectives. This led him to explore the transcendence nature of solving complex, socially wicked issues.

He authored three books that outline the environmental, socio-economics, and governance of EcoCommerce for the purpose of addressing economic externalities. His third book Collaborative Environmental Governance Frameworks: A Practical Guide (2019) describes how shared governance can be used to organize socioeconomic efforts. His second book, Shared Governance for Sustainable Working Landscapes (2016) introduces the NCU (natural capital unit) that functions as a landscape accounting unit, a shared governance catalyst, and the source of a currency. His first book, EcoCommerce 101: Adding an ecological dimension to the economy (2011) describes the intimate relationship natural capital, the environment, and the economic have relative to the welfare of society and nature.