Partnering to sustainably tackle challenges in agriculture

Published: Sep 19, 2022

Nutrien Ag Solutions was recently invited to join the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative (MRCC) – a group of organizations that work together to find sustainable solutions to agricultural challenges – and our first project with the collaborative was featured in the group’s 2021 Impact Report.

The MRCC was founded in 2016, and in the years that followed started to work more directly with growers. Leaders realized that they needed to have a deeper understanding of what growers are doing, why certain practices are used on the fields, and how to implement regenerative agriculture in a way that is best for the land. As a representative of ag retail, Nutrien Ag Solutions was invited to join the group in 2021 to serve as a bridge to the growers by offering agronomic insight into the best regenerative practices for each field.

“Participating in MRCC has given us the opportunity to demonstrate our organization’s broader sustainability commitments while showing what we have in our sustainable ag toolbox that can help these other companies reach their climate goals,” says Sarah Fox, Director of Strategic Partnerships.

In collaboration with PepsiCo, Ingredion, and the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund, Nutrien Ag Solution’s Verified Outcomes Project highlighted in the report aims to encourage corn growers in the Argo, Illinois area to adopt sustainable practices to reduce carbon emissions and improve water quality. Some of these practices include cover crops, no-till and nutrient management. Growers are offered financial incentives and agronomic advice in exchange for making these practice changes and producing verified outcomes.

Seven growers enrolled in the project, implementing these practices on more than 14,000 acres and eliminating more than 8,800 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. The project’s results also offered key learnings from the first year of the outcomes-based approach:

  • For growers to join and implement large-scale regenerative practice change, the adoption must be made cost neutral by receiving an incentive for producing verified outcomes.
  • In-person field verifications were crucial during this project to ensure that the fields had the agreed upon practices in place.
  • There is a possibility to expand this project to more growers and acres in other priority locations for PepsiCo.

To read more about the Verified Outcomes Project, check out MRCC’s 2021 Impact Report.

Now that Nutrien Ag Solutions has completed its inaugural project, there is an opportunity for us to collaborate more broadly with other members of the MRCC to find innovative ways to meet the needs of the growers while still working to achieve the goals of the group.

“This is a group where we can come together and have real, honest and challenging conversations when it comes to regenerative agriculture,” says Sarah. “Having those conversations allows us to understand the hurdles other companies are facing in the sustainability space and come together to figure out how we can work together to achieve all of the goals we have set for ourselves.”