Hyatt Regency
1300 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN
November 20 - 21
2024 Draft Schedule
Sustainable Agriculture Summit: A Decade of Progress and a Vision for the Future
Ten years ago, the first Sustainable Agriculture Summit in Minneapolis brought together farmers, suppliers, processors, brands, academia, conservation organizations, and the public sector to advance sustainability in U.S. agriculture.
Since then, agriculture has undergone massive shifts driven by ground-breaking technologies, global supply chain disruptions, social change, and more. Now, more than ever, collaboration within the agricultural supply chain is essential to solving our shared challenges and driving a more sustainable future for our industry.
The 2024 Sustainable Agriculture Summit will offer actionable insights from world-class experts, on-the-ground perspectives from farmers and ranchers, additional interactive breakout sessions, and valuable networking opportunities. Join us as we celebrate a decade of collaboration – exploring the past, present, and, most importantly, the future of sustainable agriculture.
*Listed in Mountain Standard Time
Exploring the Business Opportunity in Supporting and Partnering with BIPOC and Woman Farmers
Over the last decade, the ag sector has seen success in calling attention to underserved and marginalized farmers in our ag system and the important role that farmer advisors play in helping farmers implement regenerative ag practices. This session will explore the farmer advisor and service provider needs of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and women farmers, and where there’s opportunities for agribusinesses to develop and offer services to meet these needs.
Nature Metrics Workshop: Measuring Progress in Agri-Food Supply Chains
Farmers rely on and connect to nature for a range of ecosystem services. Understanding the risk that nature loss and degradation pose to their businesses, farmers and companies across the agri-food supply chain are taking actions to preserve, and restore. Recently, the SBTN released guidance on nature metrics related to land, freshwater, ocean, atmosphere, and indigenous peoples to equip companies with a consistent set of metrics related to nature. This workshop will highlight emerging nature metrics and explore how companies can work with growers to use existing farm-level data to assess, measure, set targets, disclose and act on nature.
Small Changes, Big Impacts: Two Decades of Prairie Strips Progress Across the Midwest
Prairie strips, or CP43, is a conservation practice designed to alleviate biodiversity loss and environmental damage associated with row-crop agriculture. Included in the 2018 Farm Bill, this practice aids soil, nutrient, water and wildlife conservation across the U.S. Midwest. Social surveys in 2012 revealed demand among both farm and non-farm populations for the outcomes prairie strips produce. To engage landowners, partners working across multiple sectors in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota focused on prairie strips outreach. To date, the results include more than 22,000 acres of CP43 in 15 states -- and still growing!
Crop Insurance for Practices that Reduce Risk and Improve Environmental Outcomes and Profitability
Join us for a cross-cutting discussion on how to improve the Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) to help farmers reduce risk by better incorporating conservation and farming diversification practices that strengthen economic and environmental sustainability. Speakers will highlight future opportunities for the FCIP to support greater on-field and landscape-level diversification, and practices, such as split nitrogen application, adoption of cover crops, and diversified farming systems that reduce risk and strengthen long-term economic and environmental sustainability.
Strengthening Supplier-Customer Sustainability Partnerships (Partner Sponsor: U.S. Poultry & Egg Association)
Data needs and requests can cause tension between customers and suppliers. This lecture and panel will delve into the work that the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Poultry & Eggs and the American Egg Board are doing to bridge that divide and make it easier for the supply chain to work together to drive continuous improvement. The audience will hear from major poultry & egg producers and customers who share their experience and practical advice of how to navigate these relationships and the pressures they face from their segment of the supply chain.
Socio-economic Benefits of Farm and Ranch Planning: Reaching Producers Where They Are
Sustainable practices at the farm and ranch level are the foundation for a sustainable food system. Understanding where producers are at, including their challenges and motivations, is key to understanding how to best reach them with relevant support as well as new innovations and technologies. This panel will provide insight into methods to identify the current state of practices at the farm and ranch level as well as the factors that motivate or influence producers in their decision-making processes, using grazing management planning as a case study.
Sustainable farming practices often come with significant costs, which are typically paid for by farmers and ranchers. Like all business owners, producers are more likely to adopt sustainable practices if there is a clear opportunity for a return on investment and less financial risk. To support this, agriculture stakeholders, sometimes in conjunction with state entities, have been working to demonstrate the financial benefits of these practices and identify financial planning solutions. The Minnesota Farm Business Management Program is a prime example of this, developed to provide one-on-one business support to farmers to help them understand the strengths and weaknesses of specific practices and prepare a strategy for long-term success. Learn how successful local programs, like Minnesota's, can be a model for nation-wide farm financial benchmarking efforts that support farmers in their endeavor to implement sustainable practices while sustaining their business.
38% of all food in the U.S. goes unsold or uneaten, lost at various points from the field to the family table. This surplus food consumes land, water, fuel, and other valuable resources as it’s grown, processed, prepared, and disposed of, adding to overall GHG emissions, and costing the U.S. economy $473 billion. This session will consider a variety of solutions and partnerships aimed at reducing the environmental, social, and economic impacts of wasted food.
Designing Engagement for Impact and Scale with Movable Middle and Historically Underserved Producers
Design your own producer engagement strategy! Participants will walk through a real-world planning process and learn how to apply data to more effectively reach middle adopters and underserved producers – whether they are Great Plains ranchers, African-American row crop producers in the South, or young Midwestern specialty crop farmers. The five steps in Trust In Food’s™ and Environmental Initiative’s Reach Farmers Faster engagement-design process were built from groundbreaking human dimensions research. Learn about and deploy producer-centered outreach planning to more quickly persuade producers to access technical support, enroll in programs, and scale sustainability practices.
Measure and Report the Impacts of Regenerative Agriculture Initiatives Using the Fieldprint Platform (Partner Sponsor: Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture)The number of agriculture companies making public commitments to regenerative agriculture is increasing. To confidently report on progress, a scientifically sound and credible measurement framework is necessary. The Fieldprint Platform® measures and reports on-farm environmental impacts of regenerative farming practices. This session will showcase the Platform's features that track regenerative agronomic practices affecting biodiversity, land use, water use, water quality, soil erosion, soil carbon, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. Attendees will see the Platform in action and hear from companies already using this tool to achieve their regenerative agriculture goals.
Nexus of Food Safety and Sustainability
Specialty crop grower-led discussion of on-farm practices and research on the nexus of food safety and sustainability. How do growers navigate implementing biodiversity on farm while meeting the changing landscape of consumer interest in sustainability and balancing human health risk. Although both food safety and sustainability objectives are key priorities for growers, farming systems have not been optimized for long-term sustainability, particularly when incorporating food safety practices that are required for fresh produce. Growers must navigate the complexities of supporting sustainability, biodiversity, and food safety outcomes. The panel will discuss managing the incompatibility and opportunities of these priorities.
Innovative Approach to Addressing Land Use Change – Connecting Across Drivers and Solutions
This session will feature a panel of experts from farming, policy, agriculture, and conservation. They will discuss new ways to work together to understand and address land use change, aiming to create more effective solutions for farmer/rancher markets and the environment. The session will involve building and refining maps that illustrate the complex factors and solutions related to changes in farmland and grasslands. By involving both the experts and the audience, the goal is to enhance these maps and foster better collaboration for a comprehensive approach to land use change.
Open Access Tools to Measure Soil Health, the Foundation for Regenerative Agriculture
How can we measure and demonstrate the impact of regenerative practices at scale? In this session, you’ll discover free technologies that help growers, advisors, and industry stakeholders track progress and make data-driven decisions to enhance resiliency. Watch a live demonstration of Slakes, a smartphone app that measures aggregate stability, an essential indicator of soil health. Hear case studies on the economic and environmental benefits of regenerative practices and learn about the next frontier: a new Drought Resilience Calculator to help growers advance water stewardship and lead their farms – and the supply chain – toward a more sustainable future.
Innovating Livestock Sustainability Through R&D Funding, Acceptance, and Adoption
Innovation in the livestock sector takes many forms – from improved genetics to novel feedstuffs and beyond. The ability of the sector to continue innovating relies not only on public and private financial support for research and development, but also on technology uptake in the value chain and consumer acceptance – which often influences technology adoption, for better or worse. This panel discussion will feature insights from experts across animal agriculture on lessons learned from historic challenges in innovation and opportunities for future innovation to be successfully adopted, both in practice and by consumers.
Investing in Your Workforce to Build Business Resilience (Partner Sponsor: U.S. Roundtable For Sustainable Beef)
Recent producer surveys show ag labor as one of the top challenges for the success of livestock and farming operations. How can agricultural operations build a culture that attracts and retains a capable and motivated workforce? Join this session to hear the latest research on understanding animal caretaker perspectives of job satisfaction, training approaches, management culture and key motivators. Compare what workers say with what a large ag employer sees playing out in their business each day. Bring your questions and thoughts for a robust discussion on how ag can be an industry of choice, both today and tomorrow.
Delving into Integrated Pest Management: An Essential Addition to Your Sustainability Agenda
Explore Integrated Pest Management (IPM) through a 30-minute interactive simulation that highlights the dual impact of IPM on environmental health and economic viability in agriculture. Led by University of Idaho Extension educators, this session offers a practical overview of IPM strategies essential for sustainable agricultural planning and decision-making. Participants will navigate decisions that balance financial risks and environmental benefits crucial to effective pest management. Following the simulation, a flash panel will illuminate why IPM is integral to large-scale sustainability strategies, offering insights into its implementation and impact.
Updates from DiverseCornBelt: Enhancing Rural Resilience through Landscape Diversity in the Midwest
Farmers have excelled in producing corn and soybeans, a rotation deeply embedded in Midwestern culture. However, climate change, commodity prices, changing markets, and struggling rural communities threaten this bounty. Evidence suggests increased agricultural diversity could enhance resilience. Working with a range of stakeholders, the USDA-NIFA funded Diverse Corn Belt (DCB) explores opportunities and challenges for agricultural diversity in the Corn Belt. We will share 1) DCB findings related to agronomic, economic, infrastructure, and policies impacting diverse agriculture with an emphasis on farmer voices and 2) Insights from Star of the West Milling related to market investments, processing challenges and solutions.
A Decade Working with Ag Retail to Scale Conservation: What’s Worked and What’s Still Needed
Shifting to a regenerative food system requires industry wide collaboration and innovative approaches to scale adoption of key practices. Trusted ag retail advisors are positioned to significantly influence and support successful implementation of this work, while creating new revenue and business opportunities. This session will explore the emerging field of 'conservation agronomy,' featuring perspectives from NGOs, an industry group, ag retail, and farmers. Speakers will share research, practical resources, and on the ground examples of successful service-based models for conservation delivery, while engaging the audience in applying key insights to their own position in the value chain.
Leveraging Materiality Assessments: Building a Strong Foundation for a Sustainable Future
Materiality assessments enable businesses to address their impacts on the environment, economy, and people, fostering innovative sustainability approaches. These assessments help organizations prioritize their most significant impacts, align stakeholders, set comprehensive sustainability strategies, and establish a strong foundation for a sustainable future. This session, featuring insights from ISOS Group’s materiality assessments for Associated Milk Producers, Inc. (AMPI), First District Association (FDA), and Leprino Foods, covers ESG reporting, data collection tools, stakeholder engagement, and sustainability policies. Attendees will gain practical insights, learn to apply assessment results, and understand the importance of materiality assessments in sustainability journeys across various industries.
Water Stewardship in the Nebraska High Plains: A Case Study on Farmer-Led Conservation Efforts
This panel highlights a decade of farmer-led water stewardship initiatives in Nebraska, showcasing practical approaches to furthering agricultural sustainability. Exploring innovative technologies, multi-stakeholder collaborations, and economic strategies, the session will demonstrate how local initiatives can inform national sustainability efforts. Panelists will discuss the past decade's achievements, current challenges, and visions for another decade of progress, offering insights on scaling water-smart practices across diverse agricultural settings. This forward-looking discussion will provide attendees with valuable perspectives on navigating future challenges in agricultural sustainability, emphasizing data-driven solutions and ecosystem preservation.
For more than a decade, we have examined the potential for U.S. agriculture to accelerate environmental solutions while also creating a thriving economy. We aren’t yet there, so what more is needed to unlock that potential? In this session, we’ll explore how food and beverage companies can work with their suppliers to address many of the sticking points – farmer financial risks, complex metrics and reporting systems, challenging policy environments, and the need for technical support – that pose barriers to widescale adoption of sustainable practices. Learn what will be needed for U.S. agriculture to move beyond individual projects to industry-wide action that delivers tangible results for farmers and the supply chain.
Solutions for a more sustainable future for food and agriculture are within reach on America’s farms and ranches. No two farms are alike, so a key ingredient for accelerating agriculture-driven solutions is a robust bench of technical assistance and peer support that provides farmers with expert guidance for successful implementation of new practices and technologies. Farmers from across commodity sectors will discuss where they already find support, what resources they feel are missing, and how the value chain can bolster existing or develop new systems that provide clarity and advance sustainability approaches.
Healthy soil is the foundation of healthy agricultural ecosystems. The application of practices like no-till, cover crops, crop rotation, and integrated crop and livestock systems can build healthier soils that are more productive and more resilient to extreme climate events. This session will discuss the latest soil health research and how understanding the various impacts of soil health practices can help farmers and ranchers make more informed soil health management decisions on their operations.
As efforts ramp up on Scope 3 measurement and reporting, companies are turning more of their attention to farm-level data. How are farmers navigating these requests and the myriad platforms used for reporting? Farmers from across commodity sectors will share insights, challenges, and concerns from their own experiences responding to supply chain reporting requests and discuss what downstream support could make the process less daunting.
Building Pathways to Sustainable Agriculture Practices for Native Producers
Farm Journal Foundation and Intertribal Agriculture Council are partners on a USDA Climate-Smart Commodities Grant project, titled ‘Improving Access to Grazing Resources for Native American Producers.’ Learn how the organizations are working together to make sustainable grazing and complementary practices more accessible to Native producers, the importance of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), and the future opportunities this partnership hopes to catalyze for Tribal producers.
Dairy Soil & Water Regeneration Project: Exploring the Environmental Impact of Dairy Feed Production (Partner Sponsor: Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy)
Without quantifiable data to understand the benefits of sustainable field practices, farmers are not able to make informed decisions. The Dairy Soil & Water Regeneration (DSWR) project is part of the U.S. Dairy Net Zero Initiative (NZI), an essential first phase focusing on farm and in-field actions to achieve the dairy industry’s 2050 environmental stewardship goals developed through the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. Join us to hear insights from project leaders, researchers, and a participating farmer on the eight-year project assessing how field management practices impact soil health, greenhouse gas emissions and water quality in dairy feed production.
Regenerative Agriculture in Specialty Crops: What Have Brands and Farmers Learned so Far? (Partner Sponsor: Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops)
To date, regenerative agriculture is largely being defined by and for animal agriculture and row crops. Fruit, vegetable and nut producers stand to make large contributions to regenerative agriculture. As a context specific and outcome-focused approach to farming, regenerative agriculture looks quite different across various specialty crop systems, yet it still requires a consistent measurment to quantify impacts. Leading brands continue to be in the best position to help facilitate greater adoption of regenerative agriculture through their supplier engagement programs and policies. This session will explore how food companies work with specialty crop producers to implement regenerative goals and programs.
The Agriculture Finance Sustainability Coalition: Driving Blended Finance to Advance Sustainability
In 2024 a group of agriculture and environmental organizations and financial institutions created the Agriculture Finance Sustainability Coalition. The mission of the coalition is to spur increased financing of practices, technologies and systems that mitigate GHG emissions, build climate resilience, and generate additional benefits. The coalition partnered on a $7 billion U.S. EPA fund that will provide low-cost, flexible capital that can be blended with traditional sources of agriculture finance and enable the development of new financial solutions that meet the needs of farmers in adopting sustainable practices. Join this session to learn about these blended finance approaches and more.
Partnering for Supply Chain Progress: How the Right Partners Best Accelerate Sustainability Progress
Scaling climate-smart agricultural practices can only be achieved through partnerships throughout the supply chain. But how do you bring together the RIGHT partners to accelerate tangible progress? Using the Advancing U.S. Pork Sustainability Climate-Smart Grant as a real-world example, Ducks Unlimited, Nestle and Eocene, along with National Pork Board and Minnesota Pork, will demonstrate the following: 1) how their strategic partnership is benefiting all aspects of the food chain; 2) their collaboration to engage producers at the farm level; 3) the value on building on existing systems, and 4) why their collaboration gained attention on international and national stages.
Research Pipeline for Profitable, Climate-smart Food Systems
New legislation and USDA programming such as the Climate-Smart Commodity Partnership Program have provided unprecedented investments in climate-smart agriculture. Companies that certify carbon credits or quantify the greenhouse gas emission reductions of climate-smart practices play an important role in creating new business models and market opportunities for producers who embrace climate-smart practices. Nevertheless, scientific gaps need to be filled to drive growth in these emerging new profit streams. This session will review major federal investments in climate-smart agriculture and will explore with industry experts and scientists what new science is needed to drive an emerging era of climate-smart agriculture.
On-Farm Economic Sustainability, driving success through AI and creative financial instruments
There is an unprecedented >$20B in grant dollars available to US farmers to implement environmental sustainability focused practices. In this session, we explore the intersection of the abundance of funds and the challenge of identifying grant eligibility and how AI can reduce the friction.
Grazing, Genetics, and GHG: Innovative Approaches to Accelerate Sustainability in Livestock Systems
As corporations and the greater beef industry look to reach net-zero, accelerating adoption of a wide-breadth of sustainable management practices at the ranch-level will be key for progress. While there has been and will continue to be impact from more common sustainability practices like cover crops and no-till, other practices can help compound that progress to help reach 2030 and 2050 targets. With concrete examples, this panel brings together leaders in livestock sustainability to discuss novel and innovative practices for GHG reductions and removals across the value chain – while simultaneously delivering greater efficiencies, productivity, and operational resilience for ranchers.
Restoring Natural Habitats on Marginal Land Through Edge of Field Practices (Premier Sponsor: Corteva)
In 2021, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) led the development of an “Edge of the Field Roadmap”, providing nine recommendations for building momentum and capacity to support natural habitat restoration and conservation drainage on agricultural lands. TNC is now operationalizing these recommendations through a project in partnership with Corteva Agriscience that aims to develop, pilot, and evaluate a “payment for ecosystem services” model to restore natural habitats on marginal land.
Full-farm Sustainability: Diverse Approaches to Support Producers Providing Diverse Benefits
Organizations across the agricultural value chain are developing commitments to multiple sustainability outcomes, like climate, water quality, and biodiversity. Tools and monitoring frameworks are increasingly available for simultaneously assessing multiple sustainability metrics and supporting producer improvements on production acres, but growers and landowners make land management decisions that influence ground beyond these acres. We will present views from brands and retailers, civil society conservation organizations, and research and academia regarding development of sustainability goals, metrics, and systems to landscape-level support for nature-positive production on the full footprint of land decisions that producers make.
Progress Over Perfection: How to Balance Farmer Needs in a Dynamic GHG Accounting World
Over the last ten years, private sector initiatives to reduce agricultural sector greenhouse gas emissions have flourished, and “Scope 3” has become part of the lexicon of agriculture. Voluntary international frameworks to guide accounting for Scope 3 emissions are available, but a number of challenges exist. Additionally, private sector players have developed guidelines to ensure a more level playing field and improve farmers’ access to programs involving measurement and verification. This panel will explore how companies are working with producers to increase conservation and resiliency and how these activities are, or are not, captured by current GHG accounting frameworks.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Harmonization for the U.S. Animal Feed Industry
Animal feed transects both food and fuel sectors. Sector requirements, process model norms, allocations, and uncertainties in crop-derived data sets inject complexities that hinder production system life cycle assessments (LCAs). There is a need to advance the U.S. animal feed industry’s ability to account for its footprint (as well as that of feed’s animal customers) to compete in domestic and global markets through LCA harmonization. This panel will discuss LCA harmonization implications, including implications if done right or wrong. And, we will address industry progress and awareness of the benefits and challenges of LCA harmonization and how harmonization can occur.
According to recent research, younger generations are often at the forefront of the climate debate and deeply passionate about caring for their environment. Gen Zers and younger Millennials are talking more about the need for action on climate change, viewing more climate change content online, and doing more to get involved with sustainable practices either through their own behavior, or becoming active as volunteers. Students are prepared to be impactful now and need those who have come before them to function as colleagues and mentors. Learn from a panel of collegiate students about their perspectives on sustainable agriculture and what role they believe they play within it, as well as the support they need from you.
From stone tools to mechanization, plant and animal genetic improvements, precision agriculture, and more, technology has played a crucial role in increasing agricultural productivity and efficiency throughout history. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is among the latest in a long line of increasingly sophisticated technologies revolutionizing our industry. Able to process vast amounts of data much faster than humans, AI has the potential to inform better decisions and reveal even newer innovations all along the food and agriculture value chain. In this session, explore how AI is already being deployed across agriculture and how further advances could help to transform the industry to be more efficient, productive, and sustainable.