Farm4Profit Podcast

Navigating Sustainable Agriculture: A Chat with Primient & Truterra

Episode Summary

diving deep into the realms of sustainable agricultural practices and responsible supply chains. We're joined by two remarkable guests: Gregg Allard from Truterra and Laura Kowalski, Global Sustainability Manager at Primient. With Gregg's expertise in regenerative agriculture and Laura's leadership in sustainability, we're about to uncover the dynamic collaboration between these two entities. Tune in as we explore the intersections of sustainability and profitability in the farming world, dissecting concepts like sustainable supply chains, carbon credits, and regenerative agriculture. Learn how these practices can revolutionize agriculture, benefiting farmers, companies, and our planet.

Episode Notes

Your two guests:

• Gregg Allard, Truterra: Can provide overview of Truterra’s work with downstream customers
• Laura Kowalski, Global Sustainability Manager, Primient: Can provide sustainability specifics across enterprise and on work with Truterra

Laura’s Bio:

Laura leads sustainability at Primient. She has over 10 years of experience working in corporate sustainability. Laura has a Master’s degree in sustainable management from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Laura lives in Naperville, Illinois with her husband and 2 young boys. 

Gregg Allard
Gregg Allard leads the Commercial and Strategic Partnerships team at Truterra where he is responsible for building and implementing regenerative agriculture programs with food, fuel, feed and fiber companies.  These projects include both supply chain insetting and carbon offsetting projects to support the Truterra network of growers across the US. 

About Primient

Primient is a leading producer of food and industrial ingredients made from plant-based, renewable sources. We deliver value through deep technical, commercial, and operational excellence that is backed by our long-standing corn wet milling heritage. Wherever we are in the process, from field to customer, our priorities are focused on ensuring we produce the safest, highest quality products through practices that uphold both our responsibility and commitments to our people and our planet.

About Truterra
Truterra is a leading agricultural sustainability business that offers consultation, tools and solutions for ag, food and CPG industries. Truterra works to advance and connect sustainability efforts throughout the food system at scale – from farmers to ag retailers to value chain collaborators including food and fiber companies. Truterra positions farmers for success by providing them tools and resources to establish a stewardship baseline, track progress on every field they farm, access conservation resources, and prepare for ecosystem services market opportunities.  Truterra was launched in 2016 by Land O'Lakes, Inc.

Primient + Truterra Working Together

The goal:

• advance sustainable agricultural practices on acres equivalent to the global annual corn procurement volume (1.2 million acres). 
• Soil Carbon, Wind Erosion, and Soil Conservation metrics; as well as, Nitrogen Use Efficiency, Conservation Practices 
• How are these items monitored?
• Deployed and Truterra insights score through the Truterra sustainability tool. Blog post on Primient/Truterra work for reference: https://primient.com/news/article/2023/02/leading-the-way-in-sustainable-agriculture

Sustainable Supply Chain Details

• carbon markets/credits, which companies can purchase to offset their emissions, 
• Then there’s what we call Sustainable Supply Chain,
• which refers to the act of monitoring and evaluating a company’s supply shed to understand the sustainability qualities for something like corn, in Primient’s case. 
• Truterra helps them track and monitor to eventually be able to report for scope 3 purposes. 
• It may oftentimes be the same practices farmers are doing (reducing tillage, cover crops etc) that result in carbon credits, but a company is able to then take credit for this quality within their supply chain.
• Truterra’s role is to bridge the gap between farmers and companies with sustainability goals who choose agriculture to be a part of their toolkit of solutions.

Questions

• What is a sustainable supply shed?
• Why are companies interested in it? 
• Why Primient is choosing to invest so heavily in this space? 
• What crops or products are involved?
• How did Primient get started in this space?
• How does Truterra work as an integral part of the solution? 
• How is the sustainability of the supply shed measured?
• Is this different than how carbon credits are measured?
• If I’m a farmer, what attributes are you specifically looking for in the corn that you procure? 
• How do you determine the bushel of corn that is different from regular?
• We saw regenerative ag in action today, and it's clear that it's both an art and a science and no one size fits all.
• Are you looking to tell the farmer how to raise the crop?
• can you speak to the importance of a partner that understands farmers' different growing environments?
• We are Farm4Profit – and it’s our understanding that Truterra thinks profitability and sustainability can go hand in hand – how do you see this coming to life for a farmer like (Corey)? 
• When does the juice become worth the squeeze?
• What else is important to cover today?
• Summary
• Challenge
• What would you go back and tell yourself at age 18?