Iowa Ag Connection - Purina Supports Farmer-Led Sustainability with Land O'Lakes

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Purina Supports Farmer-Led Sustainability with Land O'Lakes
Iowa Ag Connection - 12/03/2019

Nestle Purina PetCare reveals its new commitment to support environmental stewardship practices on 50,000 acres of farmland alongside Land O'Lakes SUSTAIN, the sustainability solutions business of Land O'Lakes, Inc.

The initiative aims to drive sustainability in Nestle Purina's grains supply chain to the scale of more than 9 million bushels annually over the next two years.

Using the Truterra Insights Engine, an on-farm conservation management platform, the new initiative will help farmers benchmark their current on-farm stewardship practices and identify areas of improvement. Ultimately it aims to help them protect the air, land and water while keeping farm economics in focus.

"Nestle Purina is proud to support farmers' leadership on sustainability and we are pleased to launch this major new initiative to bolster stewardship, in a quantifiable way, on farms where we source ingredients for our high-quality dog and cat food products," said Jack Scott, vice president of sustainability and responsible sourcing for Nestle Purina. "By utilizing the Truterra Insights Engine to help support sustainable farming, we can help protect the environment for future generations and support their livelihood -- a critical driver for the rural economy across America."

Under the new program, Nestle Purina is supporting conservation practices on Iowa farms initially, surrounding the company's Davenport, Iowa, and Clinton, Iowa, production facilities. Working together with local agronomy retailer Innovative Ag Services (IAS), farmers will be able to use the Truterra Insights Engine to benchmark current practices and environmental impact on a field-by-field and acre-by-acre basis.

By deploying a metric-based approach to measure stewardship outcomes, the initiative aims to support long-term conservation and productivity on farms and quantify the impact of conservation practices across many areas -- nitrogen efficiency, erosion, soil quality, GHG emissions and carbon sequestration.

The initiative also closely follows Nestle's commitment to climate action and the company joining the 'One Planet Business for Biodiversity' (OP2B) coalition dedicated to scaling up regenerative agriculture practices to protect soil health.

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