Innovative Ag Services, Truterra, and Nestle Purina PetCare Iowa Corn Project
The goal of the partnership between Innovative Ag Services, a member owner of Land O'Lakes Inc.; Truterra; and Nestle Purina PetCare is to advance sustainable agricultural practices in Eastern Iowa. Nestle Purina’s two manufacturing facilities source corn from growers in this geography, and the intent is to deliver access to insights and improvement opportunities for the key market in Nestle Purina’s supply chain using the mass balance approach to fields close to Clinton and Davenport, IA. There are no specific improvement targets, rather the requirement is to show continuous improvement year-over-year. Seven KPIs are used to demonstrate year-over-year improvement including: Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Nitrogen Use Efficiency, Soil Quality Trends, Wind Erosion, Sheet and Rill Erosion, Conservation Practices Deployed and Truterra Insights Score.
The baseline results on 50,000 acres in Eastern Iowa be available in early 2021. Year-over-year changes in KPEs and conservation practice adoption will be tracked and reported in early 2022.
Engagement Targets
Notes: (1) Minor fluctuations in the number of retained growers is expected from year to year. These fluctuations may be due to year-over-year crop rotation effects or other factors beyond the control of the project. Enrolled acres represent the total number of acres on an individual farm in a specific year. The ability to report enrolled acres is based on the Fieldprint Project Standard requirement that individual growers enrolled in projects enter at least 10% of the acres managed for a specific crop. (2) Entered acres represent the actual number of enrolled acres for which data is entered in the Fieldprint Platform for analysis.
Objectives
Working with Truterra LLC in 2022, Innovative Ag Services enrolled 82 growers and 50,180 acres of cropland in Eastern Iowa in the Truterra Program. FieldPrint Calculator scores are available on 47,195 acres.
Working with Truterra LLC in 2020, Innovative Ag Services enrolled 81 growers and 50,000 acres of cropland in Eastern Iowa in the Truterra Program. FieldPrint Calculator scores are available on 49,141 acres.
All enrolled fields practice no-till (42%) or conservation tillage methods (a combined 58% - strip, mulch and reduced till). The adoption of cover crops is at 4%. Most of the enrolled fields (83%) have at least one conservation practice implemented. Truterra promotes 26 different conservation practices identified by NRCS. The number of total individual practices implemented went up slightly from prior year.
Nitrogen use efficiency on the enrolled corn acres moved from the High to Advanced category since prior year. There was a big move from Minimum to Basic integrated pest management. There were slight increases in all nutrient management categories, with continued high usage rate of nutrient plans (73% of enrolled acres), variable application technology for fertilizers (64%), soil sampling (80%) and grid soil testing (77%).