General Mills, P&G, Pepsi, Others Set Sustainable Agriculture Goals

Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture today announced goals that its member companies — including General Mills, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Cargill — have committed to in an effort to advance sustainable agriculture in the US.

Field to Market and its members pledge to deliver:

• Sustained reduction in soil erosion to tolerable levels or below on all US cropland.
• Sustained improvement of land use efficiency by increasing productivity on US cropland, conserving native habitat, and enhancing landscape quality.
• Sustained contribution to solving regional water quality problems as evidenced by reductions in sediment, phosphorus, nitrogen, and pesticide loads from US cropland.
• Sustained reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from US cropland per unit of output.
• Sustained contribution to solving regional water scarcity problems through continual improvement in irrigation water use efficiency and conservation.
• Sustained improvement in energy use efficiency from US crop production.

To achieve these goals, Field to Market will seek to engage 20 percent of productive acres of US commodity crop production, which is equivalent to 50 million acres, in its supply chain sustainability program by 2020.

Late last month Field to Market partnered with The Sustainability Consortium in a move aimed at creating a common framework to measure and report the sustainability of US agriculture.