From Crops to Crackers: Truterra Celebrates Six Years of Working with Campbell Soup Company

2024 marks the 6-year anniversary of Campbell Soup Company working with Truterra on sustainability projects relating to wheat ingredients.

The work between Truterra and Campbell is enabled with and through farmers’ trusted advisors, ag retailers. Since its inception, the project has grown from one ag retailer working with farmers growing wheat in rotation, to now eight different ag retailers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Kansas. Collectively, these ag retailers have extended the Campbell’s sustainability project to include approximately 100,000 acres of farmland including wheat in rotation, allowing for ongoing learning about how farmers are producing this key crop.

Our collaboration was designed to deliver several environmental benefits, including reduced risk of soil loss, improved soil quality, and better nutrient management.

• Reduced risk of soil loss: reducing erosion helps to protect nearby water sources.
• Improved soil quality: measuring and managing for soil organic matter helps improve crop yields and crop resiliency to environmental stresses.
• Better nutrient management: nutrient management can increase agricultural productivity while also minimizing the environmental footprint of agriculture.

 
Expertise in sustainable farming continues to grow for ag retailers as well. To better support farmers on their stewardship journey, some ag retailers have added specialized roles called conservation agronomists. Two of the co-ops involved in the work with Campbell, Mercer Landmark and Heritage Cooperative, have partnered with conservation organizations American Farmland Trust and Pheasants Forever, to add conservation-focused expertise to their staff.

“Having a conservation agronomist on staff at our organization has created opportunities for our advisors to deliver new insights to our producers and shift the conversation from conventional practices to legacy stewardship,” said Neal Horrom, Mercer Landmark Chief Operating Officer. “Our customers who engage in these programs have transitioned from commodity market price chasers to value-added food ingredient suppliers.”

Participating retailers are also offering new services to help farmers make more efficient use of their seasonal crop inputs. The Mill, a Maryland-based retailer serving farmers in the Chesapeake Bay region, has expanded their Decision Ag Services offerings to include precision soil sampling and nitrogen modeling. Implementing a more advanced nutrient management plan can prevent losses through leaching, runoff, or volatilization, which in turn can help protect both water and air quality in the area.

“Traditionally, all acres in a field received the same rate of fertilizer, even though we know some parts of the field need more than others to produce a high-yielding crop,” said Tim Hushon, Decision Ag Solutions Co-Lead at The Mill. “If we use nitrogen-modeling technology and apply different rates across the field based on need, we can reduce in-season nitrogen application rates on corn by just over 30% vs historical practices without sacrificing productivity. These data-driven recommendations can maximize return on investment for farmers while helping protect the communities we live in.”
 
The changes within these participating ag retailers have benefited their farmer-customers in several ways. Farmers now have access to specialized expertise around conservation-focused land management, gaining essential guidance and experience as they try new practices such as tillage reductions or cover crop adoption. The new services that retailers are offering can also help farmers to better predict the impacts of changes they may be considering, hopefully improving the odds of success and potentially reducing the risk of negative outcomes.

Collaborations like the one between Campbell and Truterra produce a variety of measurable benefits. Equally valuable, though, is the opportunity for each contributor to learn from the others about how we can advance sustainable agriculture together.

Interested in learning more about the work Truterra is doing? Check out truterraag.com/articles to read about our programs, partnerships, results, and more.