Unilever and ADM Iowa Sustainable Soy Project

The Iowa Sustainable Soy Project is part of a program to enable Unilever to credibly meet its goal of sustainably sourcing 100 percent of its agricultural commodities by 2020. The goal of the project is to support farmers to adopt sustainable farming practices that improve soil health and protect water quality. The expected impact is to be able to show improvement in soil health and water quality with a recognized economic benefit for the growers.

Active
Innovation

Engagement Targets

Notes: (1) I Minor fluctuations in the number of retained growers is expected from year to year. These fluctuations may be due to year-over-year crop rotation effects or other factors beyond the control of the project. Enrolled acres represent the total number of acres on an individual farm in a specific year. The ability to report enrolled acres is based on the Fieldprint Project Standard requirement that individual growers enrolled in projects enter at least 10% of the acres managed for a specific crop. (2) Entered acres represent the actual number of enrolled acres for which data is entered in the Fieldprint Platform for analysis.

Objectives

Engage Iowa farmers delivering soybeans to the ADM milling facility to document sustainability and increase cover crop adoption.
Second Party Verified

Our Iowa Cover Crop Impact program has become the model of which we are now designing all global impact programs against. 

In 2020, we experienced a great increase in the number of "new to us" farmers entering the program who completed all milestones and were paid for their cover crop acres. In total there were 155 "new to us" growers in our program this year, and  54% of these farmers had 0-2 years of cover crop experience.  An additional 26 farmers who did not plant cover crops, but were working towards continuous improvement on their farms.  

 

Participants

Project Lead Organization(s)
Unilever (Full)
Archer Daniels Midland Company (Full)

Project Details

Status
Active
Pathway
Innovation
Natural Resource Concern

Contact

Partnership

Looking for a company interested in sustainable feed (soy meal) to join our cover crop project in Iowa. This project is already in process with approximately 300 farmers engaged.