Tyson Foods, Inc. and the Environmental Defense Fund recently announced a new partnership to develop and deploy initiatives that support Tyson’s sustainability strategy and help meet increasing consumer demand for more sustainably-grown food.
The partnership’s first project focuses on land stewardship and aims to pilot and scale agriculture practices on 500,000 acres of corn that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve water quality and maximize farmer profitability. This effort will also help Tyson meet its land stewardship goal of working with farmers to improve environmental practices across two million acres of corn production by 2020.
The pilot will use cloud-based agricultural technologies from MyFarms and Farmers Business Network, both of which collect information on agricultural production practices while protecting data privacy. Insights from the analysis of that data will inform sustainability practices at the field level.
MyFarms and FBN will work to enroll farmers in the initial sustainable agriculture project. FBN will be providing this opportunity to its 7,600 members, who span nearly 30 million acres, and are looking for new ways to continue their commitment to sustainable agriculture. Farmers enrolled in MyFarms will also have the opportunity to pilot a new scientific method, based on extensive scientific research compiled by EDF, for calculating nitrogen loss.
Excessive nitrogen application is a primary water quality concern, contributes to agricultural GHG emissions, and is a source of lost income for farmers. Other features of the partnership include analyzing sustainability data on farmland and publicly communicating progress and best practices that surface from pilot projects.
The Environmental Defense Fund is a leading international nonprofit organization focused on environmental problems using science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships.
