Supply chain collaboration to drive regenerative agriculture

Yeah, I'd say just that first off is we've been in the, ADM's been in the region ag space here for the better part of the last 10 to 15 years.

And I think this is our first partnership that has, I call it four different pieces of the supply chain, add the farmer onto it as well.

But when you have Pharma and you have ADM and General Mills and Walmart as well, I think if you look across maybe any other industry, whether it's technology, steel, banking, very rarely do you see four different spots in the supply chain working together.

to ultimately incentivize and adopt regenerative agriculture practices, they'll benefit all four of us.

So why it's so beneficial, the big part is nobody can do it alone.

We've tried it a couple of different times.

There's different lines of sight, there's different asks, there's different requests.

Farmers got to explain what works, what doesn't work.

We've got to understand from a supply chain how we can ultimately add to either the conversation, the education, or the incentives, and then share that across our supply chain as well.

So sometimes it takes more than just one entity, and I think this is a really good example of how four different companies.

And if you want to add, we're all consumers.

We all buy from Walmart as well.

Actually, five different parts of the supply chain in one partnership is pretty special.

As they always say, it takes a village, right? Yeah.

So this initiative focuses on 40,000 wheat acres across Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri.

Why these regions and why this crop and how do they fit into kind of the broader supply chain from farmer to consumer? Connect those dots for us, if you would.

yeah i'd like to think that the agriculture supply chain is one of the most transparent supply chains out there that being said it's not perfect so where we always like to start is we're uniquely positioned on the adm side that we have visibility upstream to farmers and downstream uh to at least one of those customers that is um general mills so we start by understanding where our sourcing region ultimately is because That's what we depend on.

We've depended on it for the greater part of the last 100 years.

We'd like to depend on it for another 100 years.

So engaging farmers specifically in those regions around our mills and our sourcing regions is where we like to start.

That's also where we have really good relationships with farmers, more than likely.

you know we've been working with them on buying their grain for decades so we can have an open and transparent conversation um and then understanding the complications because that's it's the one thing about region ag that's maybe different than um you know other sustainability requirements is that it's it's very local there's local opportunities and there's there's local issues that are associated with it as well when you talk about crop and soil type and weather and the different practices that could work and couldn't work.

So that's where we start is understanding our sourcing region and trying to create programs that give incentives to farmers to adopt practices that have positive environmental impacts.