This week, Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN (LOLS), a solutions provider advancing and connecting stewardship efforts throughout the food system at scale — from farmers to ag retailers to partners such as food companies — has launched two new partnerships aimed at helping farmers scale their sustainability efforts.
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.
“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.
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.
Tate & Lyle Partnership
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.
“Our on-farm conservation practices and technology support a two-pronged approach to sustainability — helping protect natural resources while improving farmer livelihoods,” Carstens said. “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.”
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.
