LAND O’LAKES & BEL BRANDS EXPANDING SUSTAINABILITY PROGRAM

This year, Truterra announced its successful bid for a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to scale sustainable practices in production agriculture. This is a big win for our cooperative system because it demonstrates local retailers’ position as trusted advisors, our farmer leadership and Land O’Lakes, Inc.’s ability to drive adoption of sustainable practices and scale downstream market opportunities.

Working with grant partners, participating retailers will introduce farmers to regenerative agriculture practices through incentives, agronomic advice, peer-to-peer networks, data entry support and more. Truterra is helping farmers adopt regenerative farming practices that could enable them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 7.2 million metric tons of CO2e over the course of five years—roughly the equivalent of taking 1.5 million cars off the road for a year.

n 2022, Land O’Lakes, Inc. received the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy’s Outstanding Supply Chain Sustainability Award for its work with Bel Brands USA and Boadwine Dairy. This multi-year pilot program began in 2021 and is designed to demonstrate the value of feed production practices that improve soil health and reduce greenhouse emissions.

As a member of Land O’Lakes, fourth-generation dairy farmer Lynn Boadwine took part in the program to increase the use of cover crops and other sustainable agricultural practices on his farm. The project provides cost incentives, access to resources and expertise, and the use of the Truterra™ sustainability tool with participating farms. The project also provided valuable proof of concept that can be scaled to additional dairy farms and supply chain participants in the future.

Directors