Sustainable U.S. Peanuts Initiative Seeks to Drive Farm Improvement and Profitability

Sustainable U.S. Peanuts Initiative Seeks to Drive Farm Improvement and Profitability

By: Lindsay Stevens

Sustainable U.S. Peanuts is an industry-born, industry-led and industry-financed initiative that aims to document the sustainability practices that go into producing peanuts.

The initiative, run by the American Peanut Council (APC), will use data voluntarily supplied by peanut growers who want to tell their sustainability story and benefit from program learnings. Using the data supplied, the initiative hopes to not only tell a consumer-facing sustainability story centered on peanuts, but also help growers drive farm improvement and profitability. This initiative will produce tools to help our industry communicate findings to consumers, governments, trading partners and other stakeholders.

Grower participation in the initiative does not require a large time commitment. It’s estimated to take one hour or less every year. But the relatively small time investment can yield big benefits. Participating growers can compare their self-assessment answers to aggregated responses from all participants. The initiative also aims to include state and national benchmarks from Field to Market (1), so growers can evaluate their performance and find ways to maximize productivity. The APC plans to develop and share national and regional reports with more insights for growers.

With all these insights, the main goal is to satisfy the interest and requirements in sustainability from our customers. Insights will be shared in aggregated form, so farms remain anonymous. For example, a message created from these insights might say, “64% of grower participants implement crop rotations of at least three years.”

"I think Sustainable U.S. Peanuts is going to be an excellent vehicle for us to tell our peanut sustainability story," said Dan Ward, a grower representative on APC’s sustainability committee and former National Peanut Board chairman. "We have an incredible story to tell, and I think we will be able to use the numbers that we get from this to market ourselves, our farms and our peanuts to customers all over the world. Also, I will be able to take the numbers that I get off my particular farm and compare myself to farmers in other regions, and I will see whether I'm successful or whether there are improvements I need to make. So far with the sustainability stories that I've read and listened to and been a part of, along with what I understand Sustainable U.S. Peanuts to mean, I think we will have a very good measuring stick to base and compare our successes with each other."

Having this information about our sustainability practices is crucial. For years, the industry has highlighted the sustainable practices our industry uses, but now we have the chance to back up this claim with data from our farmers, which will support future growth in demand for U.S. peanuts.

1 Field to Market brings together a diverse group of grower organizations, agribusinesses, food, beverage, apparel, restaurant and retail companies, conservation groups, universities and public sector partners to define, measure and advance the sustainability of food, feed, fiber and fuel production in the U.S.