Supply Chain

Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN Launches New Partnerships to Help Farmers Scale Sustainably

This week, Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN (LOLS) has launched two new partnerships aimed at helping farmers scale their sustainability efforts.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 6 years ago | About a 5 minute read

The first — with Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture — will see the availability of Field to Market’s sustainability metrics within LOLS’ new Truterra™ Insights Engine, starting in mid-December. Land O’Lakes is the first partner that will integrate fully with the latest version of Field to Market’s Fieldprint Platform, released this month.

“We are proud to partner with Land O’Lakes to give farmers even greater choice in assessing the sustainability performance of their management practices and respond to growing interest across the value chain in where and how commodity crops are grown,” shared Rod Snyder, president of Field to Market. “This collaboration integrates Field to Market’s sustainability insights alongside the stewardship and agronomic analysis for which Land O’Lakes WinField United ag-retailer owners are known — helping farmers make decisions that benefit the air, soil, water and their business.”

Truterra is an interactive on-farm digital platform that will help farmers advance their stewardship goals and ROI in real time, acre-by-acre — and help food companies measure sustainability progress. Land O’Lakes and Field to Market have a history of working closely together to advance on-farm sustainability. Land O’Lakes, a farmer-owned cooperative, is a longstanding member of the Alliance, and serves on both its Board of Directors and Standing Committees.

“The addition of Fieldprint Platform sustainability metrics to the Truterra Insights Engine is a key asset supporting the agricultural and food supply chain to utilize Truterra for data-driven insights,” said Matt Carstens, SVP of Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN. “This work enhances the ability for farmers and ag retailers to bolster their stewardship reporting across many commodities, crops and commitments — and it cements the Truterra Insights Engine as a go-to, farm-to-fork solution for food companies who turn to the Fieldprint Platform to track sustainability results achieved in the field.”

Available to both commodity producers and their trusted advisors across the LOLS network in mid-December, the common measurement framework offered by Field to Market will offer even greater depth to the Truterra Insights Engine’s ability to assist farmers in documenting their stewardship and exploring opportunities for continuous improvement. By utilizing one of the industry’s most-accepted sustainability framework, the integration of Field to Market’s sustainability metrics provides commodity crop producers and the supply chain with a seamless solution for assessing sustainability performance as well as documenting and demonstrating stewardship at the field and landscape level.

With this week’s announcement, the Fieldprint® Application Programming Interface will connect eight sustainability metrics and associated algorithms from Field to Market’s Fieldprint Platform directly to Truterra, providing farmers with an enhanced tool to assess their management practices against regional, state and national benchmarks for key sustainability indicators.

LOLS has also announced a partnership with global ingredient supplier Tate & Lyle to advance conservation practices on Midwest farms — specifically in sourcing sustainable corn. The relationship enables Tate & Lyle, a significant user of US-grown corn, to enhance sustainable agriculture by helping corn farmers target and measure the impact of their environmental stewardship efforts, using the latest technology.

This collaboration also leverages the Truterra™ Insights Engine, which will allow Tate & Lyle greater visibility into its environmental footprint beyond the factory gates, enabling the company and its customers to make informed decisions about their supply chain environmental strategies.

“This collaboration bolsters Tate & Lyle’s efforts to increase sustainability throughout the value chain, using the industry-leading Truterra Insights Engine,” Carstens said. “Our on-farm conservation practices and technology support a two-pronged approach to sustainability — helping protect natural resources while improving farmer livelihoods. Consumers care deeply about how their food is produced. Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN can aid in implementing specific conservation practices to achieve broader sustainability goals for food companies like Tate & Lyle — and help them demonstrate the results in clear terms.”

“At Tate & Lyle, we recognize our responsibilities when it comes to environmental stewardship and, with this partnership, we are strengthening the sustainability of our agricultural supply chain,” said Jim Stutelberg, President of Primary Products. “By utilizing the expertise and network of Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN and employing the Truterra Insights Engine, we can build on the great work farmers are already doing to care for the air, land and water, and partner and provide greater visibility to drive sustainability in our business.”

Farmers are supported through the LOLS agricultural retailer network in the Midwest, including Ceres Solutions, a leading agricultural retailer in Indiana. Well-known retailers such as these are trusted advisors to farmers and are well positioned to provide insights and information to farmers to enable them to make meaningful changes to their ways of working, spreading best practice throughout the farming community.

“True sustainability starts on the farm,” said Betsy Bower, agronomist at Ceres Solutions. “In order to deliver large-scale corporate sustainability commitments, we need to work with the farmer on every acre in a way that works for them and their business. Utilizing the Truterra Insights Engine through partnerships like this one make scalable impact possible. Together, we continuously adapt to improve the delicate balance between productivity, profit and preservation.”

The Truterra Insights Engine is designed to facilitate collaboration and impact throughout the industry. The full suite of the Truterra offering uses technology and collaboration to advance the food and agricultural industry’s ability to enable conservation at scale across a variety of crops, commodities and commitments.