Projects

PepsiCo, Unilever, and Cargill partner with Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) to provide farmers with data and economic analyses to demonstrate the economic opportunity of cover crop practice adoption. Practical Farmers of Iowa provides producers with agronomic assistance and promotes shared learning to remove barriers to the adoption of regenerative practices.

The companies built a cost share program to help farmers add cover crops, reduced tillage, diverse crop rotation, and advanced nutrient management to their operations. Farmers in Iowa and Eastern Nebraska growing corn and soybeans for PepsiCo, Unilever, and Cargill’s supply chains are eligible. By adding practices to more acres, MRCC members and PFI aim to improve soil health and water quality, sequester carbon, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve climate resilience, and strengthen farm economics.

Collaborative members PepsiCo and The Nature Conservancy have teamed up with Precision Conservation Management, a program of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, to enroll growers in a program that provides an economic analysis of options for soil health interventions, peer-to-peer networks, and access to cost share for first-time acres.

This program’s results have revealed a strong grower appetite for soil health-building interventions when the economic case for soil health is demonstrated, providing farmer benefit and enabling substantial greenhouse gas reductions.

In partnership with Trust in Food™, this project helps conservation professionals engage farmers with sustainable agricultural practices more efficiently. Through an online tool and tailored workshops, Reach Farmers Faster provides data-driven strategies to connect with farmers, especially middle adopters, on regenerative agriculture practices.

By focusing on scalable solutions and producer readiness, the project helps professionals understand and engage farmers better, ultimately driving large-scale regenerative outcomes across the Great Plains and Midwest.

In 2019, Kellanova (formerly Kellogg Company) and The Nature Conservancy launched the Supporting U.S. Farmers project to provide farmers producing corn, wheat, and rice with funds and technical assistance to improve their practices.

Through this partnership, MRCC members are providing farmers with funds and technical assistance to implement conversation practices such as cover crops, conservation tillage, nutrient management, vegetative buffers, irrigation efficiency, and wetland restoration, and are demonstrating that agriculture can significantly contribute to improved environmental outcomes.

The U.S. Oats for Oatly program helps growers diversify their crop rotation by providing a stable market and support for growing milling oats with a legume cover crop.

In partnership with Practical Farmers of Iowa, Grain Millers, and the Sustainable Food Lab, Oatly provides cost share support, technical assistance, and coaching for farmers to add oats and legumes to their crop rotation. This extended rotation has many soil health benefits, including increases in soil carbon and reductions in pest pressure, nitrogen inputs, and nutrient loss—all impacts serving to support farms’ long-term resilience.

Beyond the goal of providing a stable market for small grains, this program will establish how to best encourage and support growers in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa as they implement diverse rotations.

MRCC members Nutrien and PepsiCo collaborate with Ingredion and the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund to provide financial incentives and agronomic advisory to build on-farm conservation for producers growing corn.

The program, underway since 2020, helps producers add cover crops, no-till, and nutrient management into their operations. The goal is to catalyze farmer adoption of practices that generate measurable carbon reductions.