Two popular pet food companies are teaming up with nutrition company ADM to make their ingredients more eco-friendly, according to Environment+Energy Leader.
ADM is a major advocate for regenerative farming — the practice of farming in a way that maintains and improves the health of the soil instead of depleting it, as traditional Western farming methods do. It turns out that farming this way can increase crop yields, decrease pollution, and even remove heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
ADM's goal is to support 5 million acres of regenerative farmland by the end of 2025. It already had 2.8 million regenerative acres in 2023 and aimed for 3.5 million acres by the end of 2024, including 100,000 in the United States. ADM provides these farms with education, technological support, and even financial incentives to adopt regenerative agriculture methods.
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Price 💰 Now it will add corn farms in Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska to its record, as all these locations serve Mars Petcare and Royal Canin with ingredients for their pet food.
To improve soils, ecosystems, and farmers' yields, ADM encourages cover cropping (alternating crops with low-growing plants that help preserve and restore the soil), no-till farming (to decrease erosion), fertilizer efficiency programs (to avoid creating polluted runoff), and responsible herbicide and pesticide use.
These practices help to lower the production of planet-warming air pollution, a significant bonus in an overheating world.
This effort to improve the sustainability of the supply chain is in keeping with the climate goals of Mars Petcare and Royal Canin since agricultural ingredients account for the majority of their air pollution. Mars in particular has made strides recently, reducing its production of heat-trapping gases by 8% in 2023 and by 16% since 2015.
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