Growing Returns

Cutting food waste to support farmers and the famished

By Peyton Johnson / Published: August 11, 2015

Surplus food at the Food Donation Connection. Photo Credit: USDA.

Food waste affects more than just our wallets. Approximately one-third of all food produced in the world gets thrown away every year, leading to 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. At 2.6 trillion pounds, that’s enough sustenance to feed three billion people, or almost all people living in poverty worldwide today.

That’s why, last week, when I attended a Q&A session for ag interns at the U.S. Department of Agriculture with Secretary Tom Vilsack, I was intrigued when a fellow intern asked a question regarding food sustainability and what the U.S. can do to ensure that there will be enough food to feed the 9 billion people expected to populate the world by 2050.

The Secretary’s answer? Reduce food waste.

Also posted in Supply Chain / Tagged agriculture, emissions, farm, farmers, feeding forward, food, food and agriculture organization of the united nations, food bank, food chain, food companies, food waste, greenhouse gas, grocery store, homeless shelter, poverty, produce, producers, secretary tom vilsack, supply chain, sustainability, sustainable, sustainable agriculture, teens opposing poverty, united states department of agriculture, USDA, waste no food | Read 1 Response

Grasslands protocol opens another carbon market for farmers

By Robert Parkhurst / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: August 10, 2015

Growers with grasslands on their property have a new reason to leave that land untouched.

On July 22, the Climate Action Reserve, a non-profit organization that creates offset standards and serves as one of the offset registries for California’s cap-and-trade program, approved a new protocol that rewards farmers for avoiding the conversion of grasslands to cropland.

The new “grasslands protocol” highlights a growing trend in agriculture: farmers being paid for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Read More »

Also posted in Carbon Market / Tagged agriculture, American Carbon Registry, California Air Resources Board, cap and trade, carbon credit, Carbon Offsets, climate action reserve, environmental defense fund, farmers, fertilizer, grasslands protocol, greater sage-grouse, greenhouse gas emissions, lesser prairie-chicken, methane, ranchers | Read 1 Response

Sustainability and profitability go hand-in-hand, says Iowa corn farmer

By Suzy Friedman / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: July 30, 2015

Tim Richter, owner of Saratoga Partnership.

Farming is a tough business. With constantly changing crop prices, difficult to predict and increasingly extreme weather variations, and changing consumer demands, growers don’t have an easy time of it.

Like any business, profitability is the number one priority. And it should be – if you are not profitable, it’s very hard to stay in business.

All the growers I’ve worked with care deeply about their land. In a recent survey of a group of Midwestern farmers, “land stewardship” ranked as their top value. And sustainability is in a farmers’ best interest since healthy lands plays a huge role in whether farms will be around – and productive – for the next generation. But making agriculture truly sustainable will require investment from farmers.

Here’s the good news: sustainability and profitability can go hand-in-hand. Efficiencies like fertilizer optimization can result in cost savings. And with those savings, growers can invest in new technologies and cover crops, which can help make farms more resilient and increase yields, generating long term economic gain.

I asked Tim Richter, owner of a swine and corn farm operation spanning 9,000 acres in northern Iowa and Missouri, to tell me his profitability and sustainability story. Read More »

Also posted in Supply Chain / Tagged agronomy, business, commodity crops, corn, cover crops, ecosystems, environment, farm, fertilizer, fertilizer optimization, G.I. bill, growers, iowa, iowa state, land stewardship, midwestern farmers, missouri, runoff, saratoga partnership, soil, soil conservation, sustainability, sustainable, sustainable agriculture, swine, the sustainability consortium, Tim Richter, yields | Comments are closed

More reasons to embrace food sustainability

By Suzy Friedman / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: July 13, 2015

Credit: Flickr user Ruben Holthuijsen

There is no shortage of news about the contamination of drinking water sources caused by fertilizer run-off from agriculture. And there is no shortage of regulatory responses to these events: Ohio and Michigan’s commitment to reduce phosphorus levels in Lake Erie by 40 percent; the nitrate lawsuit in Des Moines, Iowa, and Monday’s ruling on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to enforce total maximum daily load specifications for the Chesapeake Bay.

In addition, food companies wanting to source sustainably grown grains to meet that consumer demand and reduce their own supply chain risks are sending the same signal, further shining the spotlight on the growing demand for improved environmental outcomes from how we produce food.

If farmers can help meet these demands by being increasingly efficient with nutrients and protecting their soils, they will see nearer term benefits and possibly stem future regulations. Here’s why:

Also posted in Supply Chain / Tagged agriculture, Des Moines, EPA, farmers, farms, fertilizer, food production, Lake Erie, nutrient efficiency, regulation, soil health, SUSTAIN, sustainability, sustainable agriculture, United Suppliers | Comments are closed

It’s official! Rice farmers now eligible for carbon offset payments

By Robert Parkhurst / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: June 25, 2015

Credit: Brian Baer Photography

The door is officially open for crop-based farmers to participate in carbon markets and earn new sources of revenue. The California Air Resources Board (ARB) just approved a new protocol for rice growers, representing the first ever carbon offset protocol for crop-base agriculture in a compliance market.

This means rice growers who implement conservation practices to reduce methane emissions can create and sell a greenhouse gas credit, commonly referred to as a “carbon credit.” Regulated California companies needing to reduce their emissions under California’s cap-and-trade program can now buy rice growers’ carbon credits.

The rice protocol milestone marks a new chapter for sustainable farming and shows the central role agriculture can play in solving the climate challenge.

ARB can now move forward in developing other agricultural offset protocols. The most interesting is a nutrient management protocol that would reward farmers who reduce nitrogen fertilizer losses to the air.

This “fertilizer protocol” has enormous potential for farmers and the environment – more than 400 million acres of cropland could be eligible for participation, and growers could contribute millions of tons of greenhouse gas reductions.

Here’s how the rice protocol works. Read More »

Also posted in Carbon Market, Climate Resilience, Wildlife Protection / Tagged agriculture, Air Resources Board, california, cap and trade, carbon offset, Carbon Offsets, climate change, conservation, credit, crops, data, drought, emissions, farming, fertilizer, growers, methane, nitrous oxide, protocol, rice, rice cultivation, sustainable agriculture, water use, western water | Comments are closed

SUSTAIN: navigating the boom in precision ag

By Katie Anderson / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: June 19, 2015

Credit: United Soybean Board

There’s new proof that precision agriculture is on the rise.

Earlier this month, CropLife magazine and Purdue University released a survey that found more than 85 percent of agricultural retailers plan on investing in precision agriculture services in the next year. And more than 15 percent of the 2,000 retailers surveyed will invest over $100,000.

This is good news for increasing fertilizer efficiency, because precision technologies can go a long way toward helping farmers know when and where to apply fertilizer. Applying fertilizer when, where, and in the amounts it’s needed can help save on input costs and reduce the environmental impacts that occur when excess nitrogen runs off into nearby waters or is released into the air.

But there’s a caveat – with so many precision agriculture tools available today and even more coming to market on a regular basis, how is a farmer to know what is best? Growers need to have confidence that precision ag tools will help them optimize their fertilizer use, improve their farm’s sustainability, and protect their yields. Read More »

Also posted in Supply Chain / Tagged agriculture, croplife, ecosystems, farmers, farms, fertilizer, food production, nitrogen, nutrient efficiency, Partnerships, precision agriculture, soil health, sustainability, sustainable agriculture, United Suppliers | Comments are closed

Campbell’s Soup expands its fertilizer optimization programs

By Suzy Friedman / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: June 2, 2015

There’s a new reason to celebrate your favorite sugar cookie. The Campbell Soup Company has committed to fertilizer optimization in its sourcing areas in Ohio and Nebraska. These areas provide wheat for Campbell’s subsidiary, Pepperidge Farm – and the company will enroll an additional 70,000 acres into its fertilizer optimization programs by 2020.

Campbell will work with EDF to create additional fertilizer optimization and soil conservation programs for farmers, and will deploy United Suppliers’ SUSTAIN platform in these sourcing areas to help ensure farmers that changing their practices will not only reduce nitrogen runoff, but also protect yields and farm income. Read More »

Also posted in Climate Resilience, Supply Chain / Tagged agriculture, Campbell, Campbell Soup, climate change, ecosystems, farmers, farms, GHG mitigation, Nebraska, Ohio, Partnerships, Pepperidge Farm, sustainability, sustainable agriculture, United Suppliers, Walmart, wheat | Comments are closed

How agriculture’s resilience to climate change benefits us all

By Sara Kroopf / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: May 21, 2015

81 percent of Americans live in cities, but rely on rural areas for everyday needs.

Traditionally, governments haven’t factored farms and ranches into their climate mitigation and adaptation planning. Instead, the focus has mostly been on protecting urban communities. But that is all changing. At the National Adaptation Forum earlier this month in St. Louis, agriculture was top-of-mind in discussions about reducing emissions and building resilience to climate change.

That’s because in order to protect people, 81 percent of whom live in urban areas, we’ll need to protect what’s around where they live, too. It’s largely rural areas, like the farming town of 1,100 people where I grew up, whose working lands and farms provide valuable services to urban areas. These services include food security, flood and drought protection, recreation and water storage. Agriculture can also play (and is already playing) a big role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The more resilient we can make agriculture, the better off we’ll all be. Read More »

Also posted in Carbon Market, Climate Resilience, Wildlife Protection / Tagged adaptation, agriculture, Air Resources Board, American Carbon Registry, climate change, compost protocol, farmers, fertilizer, GHG mitigation, green infrastructure, mitigation, ranchers, sustainable agriculture, USDA, western water, wetlands | Read 3 Responses

Why the food movement is alive and well

By Maggie Monast / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: May 11, 2015

Mark Bittman’s recent New York Times op-ed, “Let’s Make Food Issues Real,” is a grim assessment of the current state of the food movement – in fact, he questions whether a food movement exists at all.

Bittman states that the lack of major change to government food policies means the food movement is not winning. “I’ll believe there’s a food movement when Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are forced to talk directly about food issues,” Bittman writes.

I’ll take that bet. With the drought in California threatening the nation’s produce and the other impacts climate change pose to our food supply, I think it’s likely that the next group of presidential candidates will discuss food issues on the campaign trail. Read More »

Also posted in Supply Chain / Tagged agriculture, California Air Resources Board, Carbon Offsets, climate change, drought, farmers, farms, food movement, food production, Mark Bittman, nutrient efficiency, Partnerships, sustainable agriculture, USDA, western water | Read 2 Responses

Water risk: Which food companies are managing it and how can they do better?

By Rebecca Shaw / Bio / Published: May 8, 2015

Credit: Flickr user phphoto2010

Unreliable water supply and quality is a source of enormous risk to the agricultural sector. That was the key takeaway of a new report from Ceres that evaluated 37 of the world’s leading agriculture, beverage, meat and packaged food companies to see how they are managing risks from diminishing water supplies and water quality.

In a nutshell, companies need to improve their performance.

Companies use huge amounts of water in the production of crops, which also affects water quality when nitrogen fertilizer not absorbed by plants runs off into waterways. Read More »

Also posted in Supply Chain / Tagged agriculture, climate change, drought, farmers, fertilizer, food production, Partnerships, sustainability, sustainable agriculture, water, water deficit, water quality, water use, western water | Comments are closed