Regenerative agriculture is all the rage for large food companies. Their sustainability teams love telling me about ambitious goals of transforming hundreds of thousands of acres to regenerative stewardship and storing significant amounts of carbon in the soil. But I don’t often get a chance to hear from farmers about how they view the transition they’re expected to implement.
So last week, I went out to get a reality check of what’s happening in the fields. Over four days, I visited five farmers and various conservation projects in Minnesota. I also talked to folks from The Nature Conservancy and Truterra working on the ground to scale regenerative practices. Minnesota is the fifth-largest state in terms of agricultural production in the United States. Land O’Lakes, Cargill and General Mills are just some large food companies headquartered there.
I also drove hundreds of miles through the heart of Minnesota’s croplands in the center and south of the state. I learned more than I could process in the short amount of time I had before heading on to GreenBiz’s Circularity 22 conference in Atlanta this week, but I wanted to share my impressions while fresh. I’ll provide a deeper analysis of takeaways in a future edition. Read more…
