PepsiCo, Cargill, General Mills, others form row crop collaborative for sustainability
They join Kellogg, Walmart, Monsanto and three environmental conservation organizations to support sustainable farming practices on the corn, soy and wheat fields of the Midwest. Read More

Last week, six of the biggest consumer packaged food and agriculture supply chain companies and three NGOs announced they will work together to support sustainable farming practices in the vast corn, soybean and wheat fields of the Midwest.
PepsiCo, Kellogg, General Mills, Cargill, Monsanto and Walmart — whose clout is measured in their collective $697 billion in annual sales to consumers and growers — announced the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative. Joining them in the collaborative are the Nature Conservancy, the Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Fund.
What the nine entities aim to do is support work underway by some farmers and some farm groups to implement sustainable practices to enhance soil health, water conservation and use of data analytics for precise and reduced application of water, fertilizer and other inputs.
Some particular exigent problems stem from row crop agriculture in the upper Midwest.
Some 930 million pounds a year of nitrogen runs off into the Mississippi River from the corn, soy and wheat fields of the upper Midwest states of Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska. By wide agreement, that nitrogen then flows down river and contributes to a dead zone that occurs in the Gulf of Mexico annually — when oxygen levels get so low that they cannot support fish or marine life. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the dead zone last year was the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.
Additionally, groundwater is depleting in the Ogallala Aquifer. Acreage fed by the Ogallala produces about 20 percent of U.S. cattle, corn, cotton and wheat.
The aim of the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative is to encourage practices that reduce the need for fertilizer nutrients and reduce irrigation needs by bolstering soil health and thus soil retention of water and naturally created nutrients.
GreenBiz Senior Writer Barbara Grady spoke with Collaborative Co-Chair Jill Kolling, who is also senior director of sustainability at Cargill. The interview is edited slightly for brevity and clarity.

GreenBiz: What are the main goals of the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative?
Jill Kolling: We will be working together, initially focused on the three states of Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, to optimize soil health practices and outcomes, reduce nutrient runoff into rivers and streams of the Mississippi River Basin, maximize water conservation to reduce pressure on the Ogallala Acquifer and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the fields.
Then we also have specific goals that are really aligned with the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force which are ambitious, but with the companies we have involved, we will be able to scale things to accomplish.
We’ve committed to raising $4 million over five years to support the National Corn Growers Association’s Soil Health Partnership. This is a conservation program set up by farmers where they enroll farmers to try different techniques and gather data on those techniques so they can better understand what conservation practices work and where, as well as what are the environmental and economic benefits of the practices.
We are helping to fund expansion of the number of demonstration farms in those three states and help farmers learn from other farmers and their crop advisors — their trusted advisors — what conservation practices might make sense for them. Because at the end of the day, a farmer has got to understand the business case for doing these things, and not every practice makes sense everywhere.
So, for example, planting cover crops is a great way to reduce runoff, but it may not make sense everywhere from an economic standpoint, though it might make a lot of sense some places and help increase yields as well. So part of this is to really build those business cases and make them available to farmers.
It’s also about sharing information because we know there are lots of farmers already doing a lot of good work with these practices.
GreenBiz: The collaborative includes a large number of significant companies and NGOs working on this together. What is the value of having so many big players involved?
Kolling: What is really unique about this collaborative is how we represent different places in the supply chain. So I think we are able to bring a perspective that a lot of other initiatives may not have — the whole agricultural supply chain end-to-end — along with influence and expertise.
Companies of this size are able to amplify and really scale work that is going on with financial resources and expertise. So, for instance, with the marketing expertise from the consumer packaged goods companies and Walmart — a retailer — involved, the collaborative can help better tell the story of farmers and the things they are already doing for consumers. More consumers want to know where their food comes from and what on-farm practices are used in growing that food, be it row crop agriculture or animal agriculture.
We see the collaborative connecting consumers and farmers to help consumers understand that work. We also see it as a way to support farmers with the resources they need.
GreenBiz: Cargill, as an agriculture supplier and supply chain company, is closer to the farmer than the consumer packaged food companies or the retailer in the collaborative. What do you see as Cargill’s role in the collaborative?
Kolling: We feel Cargill has a unique position in the supply chain. Every day we’re out there buying things from farmers and originating crops. And we are also selling things to farmers — animal feed and other things they use. So we have that close connection with farmers. They are our lifeblood. So we feel like we can play an important role here by having that connection to the farmer of making sure the collaborative is going forth with things that do make sense for farmers and are practical for farmers. Farmers are running businesses, but they need help and support.
GreenBiz: Six major food companies represents a lot of purchasing power. What kind of influence could the collaborative have because of its six company members?
Kolling: Farmers are definitely aware of what is going on in market place and they are aware of the trend of consumers wanting to buy products they feel good about. So, having the companies involved can really help — we are all part of making the connection between farmers and consumers.
Also, there are a lot of companies that are originating and using products grown in the Midwest that are not part of this collaborative but the idea is that the research, the data gathering and the tools we may be putting together, we are going to make available to everyone.
We are also working closely with Field to Market, an organization that has about 100 members today of all types of companies and grower groups, to share this knowledge with their audience so that everyone has a chance to learn from this. So it is not really specifically tied to our supply chains although between the six companies we have a lot of assets and a lot of business happening in the states we are focusing on. But we are really looking to share this with the industry.
GreenBiz: What are the practices that you hope to promote among farmers?
Kolling: So there are a number of different practices. Things such as using cover crops (which help the soil restore naturally in the offseason through the cover crop nutrients). It could be such things such as conservation tillage. Could be using sensors to test soil moisture to make sure they are irrigating in the right place in the right amount and not overirrigating. Could be the use of precision agriculture techniques that also use soil health sensors and can help a farmer apply nutrients the right amount where it is needed for the maximum yield.
Some of this could be helping to create incentives for famers to invest in these technologies and take advantage of them.
The data we hope to generate is first, data on the amount of inputs and the yield that resulted from those inputs — so general kind of farm performance data — as well as some of the advanced data from sensor measurements of soil needs.
GreenBiz: What will be achieved if most farmers in the Mississippi Basin area adopt a whole set of sustainable farming practices?
Kolling: They will certainly reduce nutrient loading in the Mississippi and can help with the Gulf Hypoxia issue. But if you think about the whole big picture of the collaborative, it is really about focusing initially on three states, but gathering information and data and developing solutions that can be used everywhere. So our hope is to scale this through the U.S., throughout Canada and potentially throughout the world.
GreenBiz: Will this effort help us feed 9 billion people by 2050?
Kolling: Ultimately with the projections of what it is going to take to feed 9 billion people by 2050, we are working to ensure that farmers and the land that is in use today can become more productive using less and producing less emissions and runoff.
I think it is important to note that farmers are already doing good things and part of this is to recognize that, and to help consumers recognize that as well. It is really about helping farmers so they can accelerate the practices they are already doing. This is about giant companies, conservation groups and farmers partnering together for additional success.
