The Soil Center is a joint initiative between Royal Family Farming and CMI Orchards to build a world-class hub for soil health and regenerative innovation. Currently under construction, the facility is designed to transform agricultural byproducts into powerful tools for rebuilding soil and supporting a healthier planet.

At The Soil Center, byproducts from CMI’s orchards and Royal Family Farming, such as orchard wood waste, fruit culls, and other organic waste, are upcycled into valuable soil amendments through 14 acres of worm farms, biochar reactors, and composting systems. These processes convert waste into nutrient-rich, carbon-storing soil ingredients that feed the land, strengthen orchard ecosystems, and promote healthier, more resilient trees.

By turning waste streams into soil solutions, The Soil Center plays a vital role in closing the loop in agriculture, advancing regenerative practices, and proving that healthy soil is the foundation of a healthy planet.

Worm farms use a process called vermicomposting, where worms and microbes work together to naturally clean wastewater from farming operations. As water passes through beds filled with wood chips and millions of worms, the worms eat and break down organic waste while the microbes living alongside them help filter and purify the water. 

This process is useful in farming because it cleans wastewater, allowing us to reuse it for irrigation, reduces odors from manure while keeping it out of local waterways, produces worm castings—a nutrient-rich, organic fertilizer—and wipes our methane emissions from the management of manure.  

The Soil Center has two worm farms, totaling 14 acres of worm beds and millions of worms!

At The Soil Center, the carbon credits we generate are verified under the Verra Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), which is one of the world’s most widely recognized programs for ensuring carbon reductions are real and reliable. 

Here’s how it works: we document our soil carbon practices and take soil samples to calculate how much carbon is being stored over time. Then, an independent third-party verifier approved by Verra reviews our data and confirms that the carbon storage is real. At that point, Verra issues carbon credits, which can then be used or sold as offsets or insets. 

Our carbon credits are always based on actual soil samples in our orchards and operations, not from models.

Selling carbon credits to supply chain partners helps the environment by creating a financial reward for practices that reduce greenhouse gases. When partners buy credits from us, they are supporting regenerative farming that stores more carbon in the soil and reduces emissions, encouraging more sustainable practices across the supply chain and shifting money into climate solutions.

In short, when supply chain partners purchase carbon credits, they’re not just balancing their own emissions, they’re funding environmental improvements on farms that keep carbon in the ground, improves soil health, and makes agriculture more sustainable long-term. 

Our tree fruit, and other food, can be labeled “carbon negative” when the processes to grow, pack, and deliver them removes more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than the process creates. 

At CMI Orchards, this is possible because of our work at The Soil Center and in our orchards. As trees grow, they naturally pull carbon dioxide out of the air and store it in their wood, roots, and soil. Regenerative practices like cover cropping, compost, and biochar add even more carbon to the soil. At the same time, we reduce emissions from fertilizers, energy use, and waste. 

When the amount of carbon absorbed and stored by the orchard is greater than the emissions produced along the way, the result is carbon-negative fruit that helps clean the air as it grows.

Keeping carbon credits within the supply chain through The Soil Center means the climate benefits remain connected to the products we grow and sell. Instead of selling credits on the open market, we partner with our buyers and suppliers to ensure that the value stays in the supply chain. We can lower our footprints, show progress on climate commitments, and our parents know where the credits come from and how the carbon is stored. This win-win approach relationship focuses on environmental improvements and also strengthen business ties.  

In short: keeping credits in the supply chain makes climate action more local, more transparent, and more impactful for everyone involved.  

From carbon credits and insets to biochar, worm farms, and carbon-negative fruit, regenerative agriculture is more than just a collection of buzzwords, it’s the future of farming. At CMI Orchards and The Soil Center, these practices aren’t experiments; they’re real, measurable steps that lock carbon into the soil, clean our water, reduce emissions, and grow healthier crops. 

By asking the right questions, and putting the answers into action, CMI is showing how orchards can become planet positive climate solutions. And by keeping the benefits in the supply chain, we are proving that sustainability can strengthen both the planet and the partnerships that feed it.