MARKET ALERT: Land O'Lakes Launches Software Platform To Help Farmers Boost Sustainability (Forbes)

Editor's Note: Forbes reports on a software platform being used by Land O’Lakes and Campbell’s to help farmers meet the growing demand for sustainable food. The software pulls data from a number of public sources to create an environmental database. The program asks farmers a number of detailed questions about their agricultural practices, from nutrient application to water irrigation to cover cropping. The program then provides farmers with a number of personalized recommendations designed to increase sustainability. The program's creators hope it provides meaningful, metric-based insights and a common language for conservation that is meaningful for farmers and their core customers—food companies and end consumers.

January 31, 2019

Forbes

Land O'Lakes Launches Software Platform To Help Farmers Boost Sustainability

[T]wo stalwarts of the ‘Big Food’ landscape are working to clear up that murkiness with a “Turbo-Tax style” software platform aimed at getting farmers to grow their crops more sustainably.

Jason Weller, a senior director of SUSTAIN, the division of Land O’Lakes that developed the Truterra platform, says Land O’Lakes brought in a wide range of “outside experts, [including] agricultural economists, conservation experts and farmers” to work on the program.

Truterra launched in September of 2018, and Land O’Lakes is now partnering with Campbell’s to offer the software platform to their growers, which includes a number of farmers located in the Chesapeake Bay region. Many of these farmers grow the wheat that goes into Campbell’s Pepperidge Farms brand crackers and Goldfish.