Expanding Opportunities to Compensate Growers for Sustainable Practices, with Bunge's Regenerative Agriculture Lead Justin McAllister

When you have an impressive industry footprint, you've got a big opportunity to make sustainable change.

And as the world leader in oil seed processing, Bunge sets the standard in the world of agriculture.

So we're excited to announce that our sustainability initiative with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Bunge, which we just launched a year ago, is expanding from two sites in the American Midwest to five.

This program creates incentives to help growers reduce tillage, implement cover crops, diversify their crop rotation, and manage nutrients.

And, in its first year, it's met with a lot of success.

So in this episode, we catch up with Justin McAllister, Bunge’s Regenerative Agriculture Lead, to discuss how the program is growing and succeeding, what we've learned in its first year, and how it’s helping growers improve their sustainability footprints AND their bottom lines.

Visit agrible.com to sign up for Nutrien Ag Solutions' free digital toolkit, and info.nutrienagsolutions.com/SNO to learn more about Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes.

Episode Transcript:

Justin McAllister 

With sustainability and decarbonization comes a market opportunity for our farmers.  

They're the ones doing all the work here out in the field to decarbonize these supply chains. So we want to make sure we try and pass as much value back to them so that they are an equitable holder in this future that we're imagining here. 

Dusty Weis 

Welcome to the FARMSMART Podcast, presented by Nutrien Ag Solutions, where every month, we’re talking to sustainable agriculture experts from throughout the industry. 

As the leading source of insight for growers on evolving their sustainability practices while staying grounded in agronomic proof, FARMSMART is where sustainability meets opportunity. 

Sally Flis 

We don’t just talk change – we're out in the field, helping you identify the products, practices and technologies that bring the future to your fields, faster. 

I’m Dr. Sally Flis, Director of Sustainable Program Design and Outcome Management. 

Dusty Weis 

And I'm Dusty Weis, and we're joined now by Justin McAllister, Regenerative Agriculture Lead at the world leader in oilseed processing, Bunge. Justin, thank you for making time. 

Justin McAllister 

Thanks, Dusty. Glad to be here. 

Dusty Weis 

So, Justin, we're circling back with you folks from Bunge because it was just a little more than a year ago that we announced a big new sustainability initiative with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Bunge, something that was really innovative at the time, but essentially what we've done is we've created this incentive program for growers around two soybean crush facilities in the Midwest U.S. to get growers paid for their sustainability practices. 

And of course, in return for this, Bunge is that much closer to meeting its goals for reducing its carbon footprint. That's the whole thing in a nutshell there. So we've been doing it for a year now. What are the results? How are we feeling about this initiative? 

Justin McAllister 

Man Dusty, a year goes by very quickly. So in our efforts to support our customers, to promote low carbon growth, decarbonize their supply chains, we've gone ahead and released this regenerative ag program at two of our locations… one in Decatur, Indiana, and one in Council Bluffs, Iowa. We had a great mix of growers engaged on the program. 

You know, we've primarily been targeting new practices, but got a decent amount of existing practitioners into the program, and we are finishing up the year one data collection now, and we should start to see some results by the end of 2024. So it's awesome to see a campaign come full circle to completion. 

Sally Flis 

Justin, what are some of the ups and downs that we've seen in this first year? You know, I'm not as involved on the ground. I work with you guys a lot on the program planning stuff, but I've got team members that are out there on the ground with you and your merchandizers. So what's working and what's not in this program at the moment? 

Justin McAllister 

There's a couple of things here, so I'll start with the things that could use a little work. And it's not necessarily because of anybody, it's just the nature of what we're trying to achieve here. But as we go to farmers and ask them to change their practices, there's a lot of data around what they're doing for their practice change. 

And so that data lift is very big and not all the data comes in a nice, clean form. So getting the data into a usable platform, Agrible, tends to be a little bit heavier lift and taking up a lot of time in the field.  

I think also getting farmers to understand why we're doing this and why we're collecting all this data. 

I think, you know, when you show up to the farm gate and start asking what products are using and how much they’re putting on their field and telling their whole field story, you know, sometimes they tend to shy away from sharing that information, not because it's top secret or anything, but just because they want to know what it's going to be used for. 

And so as we're trying to tell the narrative around how we’re decarbonizing, this data is very important in telling that story and producing these outcomes. So I think, you know, we have to be very transparent with our growers to help them understand that aspect of the program, and that this data collection piece is what's core to telling their sustainable story on their farm. 

Dusty Weis 

Now, Sally, I know this isn't your first rodeo, so to speak, as far as sustainability programs with other downstream partners, certainly Nutrien Ag Solutions has set up a few of these now, but as you hear Justin talk about what have been, from their perspective, some of the growing pains in the first year of this program, how does that stack up to the other experiences that you've had with other downstream partners, and what are the lessons that you can apply from those previous experiences to getting the program with Bunge into its second, third, and fourth year going down the line here? 

Sally Flis 

A couple of different things there, Dusty. Justin mentioned data. I don't know if we've had an episode where we haven't talked about data in the last three and a half years of recording the podcast, because it is. If we can't show what a grower has done and what the practice changes that they're making, we can't measure that impact. 

So the data is always the key, and it's always a struggle when we were just having on a previous call today a discussion of, well, can't we just standardize the way we collect field boundaries and tell every grower that if they want to participate, this is the way we're going to collect field boundaries. And we had to have a bit of a discussion about, well, I mean, if you do, we can… we can say, we’ll only accept field boundaries that we get as shapefiles or that are in a farm management software system, but then we're going to limit who can participate, because not every grower is in the position to have that. 

Yeah, we have everything from data coming in from a farm management software system to having to sit down at the kitchen table with a grower, go through a book, having them point to a map on the field, outline it. And so really, in trying to be as inclusive of every type of producer on the ground, we've got to have lots of options for how that data gets collected. 

And that's one of the things we've really tried to do here at Nutrien Ag Solutions is offer multiple different pathways, whether it's with our crop consultants or our customer success team or our regional sustainable ag managers, to be there to help the growers understand how to do the data collection and get in the information that we need so we can make those measurements. 

But that data piece is always going to be critical because without the data, we can't get to those outcomes that Justin mentioned us being able to measure. 

Dusty Weis 

Now, I know that the data exchange and the communication over something like this, it's truly a massive effort. And in fact, we were kidding around before we started recording here. And Justin said something to the effect of Sally and I talk about 2 or 3 times a week. It's almost like we work for the same company now. But Justin, can you remind us a little bit more about Bunge as a company? 

I mean, this is a company with true scope that really has an opportunity to make a big impact globally.  

Justin McAllister 

Yeah. Dusty, I mean, we're a 200 year old company with extensive experience in originating grains and oilseeds, storing, transporting, processing, selling and distributing globally. You know, our global footprint: 23,000 employees, 300 plus facilities. 50 of those facilities are oilseed processing facility. We have 40 plus oil seed refineries, 25 plus ports globally.  

At the core of our business, we're serving over 70,000 farmer customers through our business. 

And so I like to think of Nutrien as an ag solutions provider, we try to be a solutions provider to the food, feed and fuel portion of the world.  

And so, you know, as we're working with our upstream customers, food, feed and fuel companies, we're trying to provide a solution to them to decarbonize their supply chains, make them more sustainable, and help them meet their environmental goals. 

At the same time, our unique place in the supply chain, we have a upstream farmer customer that we also have to bring solutions to when they're marketing their grains and oil seed. So we're trying to provide them with risk management solutions, market opportunities. So with sustainability and decarbonization comes a market opportunity for our farmers. So we're trying our best to provide them a solution so they can participate. 

One, investing in their farms to make them more sustainable. If they're on the fence about making the investment, hopefully our incentive program can help get them over the hump and make that investment. But also, they're the ones doing all the work here out in the field to decarbonize these supply chains. So we want to make sure we try and pass as much value back to them so that they are an equitable holder in this future that we're imagining here. 

Dusty Weis 

Those oil seeds that come into your processing facilities, they don't just come out as oil. What sorts of products do they go into? 

Justin McAllister 

You know, we're talking cooking oil, veg oils that will go into that food and energy sectors. We're producing high quality, high protein animal feeds in the form of soybean meal, canola meal, other oil seed meals from both of those supply chains. You know, we're also making derivatives. I mean, in the oil piece, there's lecithin that mainly goes into food supply chains. 

We're also a manufacturer of soy protein concentrate, which goes into a lot of these alternative protein food supply chains that are available in the market today. 

Sally Flis 

Justin, what are the practices that a grower can implement or already be implementing, as you mentioned, we're signing up growers that are both doing practices already and growers for doing new practices. So what are the practices that can participate in this program? 

Justin McAllister 

Sure. One thing when we started this journey, we wanted to make sure we had a wide casting of a net to get anything different that a farmer's doing to be more sustainable, because, I mean, farmers in the US, I mean, they're very innovative. A lot of them have been around for generations, so they're already sustainable. But, you know, we can always be better when it comes to sustainability. 

So we wanted to hear and see what everyone's doing on their farm that's maybe a little different than what we call traditional in the farming sense. And so we kind of settled on four primary categories. But within those categories there's a lot of flexibility.  

So first off it's reduced tillage. If the farmer is moving from conventional to no tillage. But we're also looking at going from conventional tillage to vertical tillage or strip tillage or some sort of variation in the middle there.  

We're also targeting cover crops. So if the farmer is planting a new cover crop or had planted cover crops in the past, we want to engage them to participate in the program.  

We also have an offering around rotation diversification. So if they've been producing one crop in their rotation and then they introduce another one, that can be a change. Or if they're a traditional Midwestern corn bean rotation and they introduce small grains or something, you know, we want to engage those growers or provide them an incentive to maybe make the investment to explore that possibility on their farm. 

And then the last main category is nutrient management. So once again, one reason why we wanted to work with Nutrien Ag Solutions is that you're experts in fertility and solutions around managing crop nutrients better on the farm. And so we want to provide incentives for growers to explore other innovative products, whether it's enhanced efficiency fertilizer or some sort of product in your portfolio that helps growers cycle their nutrients better. 

But also, we want to incentivize growers to not over apply to make sure that they're monitoring their soil fertility and only applying what the plant’s going to need, not overdoing it, and then accidentally getting access into the environment around them. 

Dusty Weis 

Now we're just coming off the first year of this incentive program here, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that only growers in parts of Indiana and Iowa were eligible to participate in this first year, because it was those two soybean crush facilities that we're going to be implementing it. Given the success that we've seen in the first year, are there any plans to expand the program, either to bring more growers in in those areas or branch out to other parts of the geography? 

Justin McAllister 

Yes, Dusty. I mean, at both of those locations in Decatur, Indiana, Council Bluffs, Iowa, we're targeting more acres this upcoming year, but we've also expanded it to three more facilities in the Eastern Corn Belt. So we've also added Morristown, Indiana, which is in the southern part of the state, and also Ohio. So Belleview, Ohio and Delphos, Ohio as delivery points where participants can participate in our regenerative ag program.  

You know, as we look at our customer needs, you know, we have a very large portfolio of customers will definitely be looking at other locations to add to the mix as our downstream customers ask for solutions. So we hope to be able to provide solutions to more of our farmers, but also our food and feed and fuel customers as well. 

Sally Flis 

Justin, you mentioned that these are all delivery points for participating in the program. So could you just expand on that a little bit and how our supply shared accounting and tracking works and why there's this requirement for the growers to deliver their beans to a Bunge facility if they're participating in the program? 

Justin McAllister 

Sure. This all goes back to our downstream customers. We want to provide a very durable outcome solution to them. And so one of our beliefs, whenever working within the decarbonization field is, we want to have a physical link to the supply chain. Our customers that are buying products derived from their soybeans, they want to have a physical link to the traceability of the sustainable attributes that we’re insetting into that supply chain. 

So in order to show proof that we are connecting these acres that were enrolled in this regenerative ag program, we're able to show the link that the farmer brought the beans to our processing facility, that we processed it into, say, meal or soybean oil, and then contractually delivered that to our customer. So there is a physical link that the decarbonization happened on a field that is in this customer's supply chain. 

So that's why it's very important here that we're just not making assumptions around the practice entered this customer supply chain. We can actually show traceability, which a lot of protocols out there allow for some flexibility there. But we wanted to have one of the most durable outcomes to deliver to our customers. Just because the solutions that we want to provide, we want to provide the best the market has to offer. 

Dusty Weis 

Well, Justin, it's really exciting to hear that the program is meeting with success, that growers are interested in it, that they're benefiting from it, and that it's expanding out right here. I mean, when you talk about oilseeds, we're talking about upwards of 80 or 85 million U.S. acres that are planted in oilseeds every year. So it's certainly a big footprint in North American agriculture with a lot of room for sustainable innovations here. 

So we want to dig in a little bit more about that. Coming up with you after the break here. That's coming up in a moment here on the FARMSMART Podcast. 

Dusty Weis 

This is the FARMSMART Podcast presented by Nutrien Ag Solutions. I'm Dusty Weis along with Sally Flis, and we're talking today with Justin McAllister, Regenerative Agriculture Lead at Bunge.  

And Justin, you probably get asked this question a lot, but I'm going to do the obvious thing and ask it anyway. As the Regenerative Ag Lead for the world leader in oilseed processing, how do you define regenerative agriculture at Bunge? 

Justin McAllister 

So we consider it a farming framework that encompasses several practices that improve structure and soil health and ecosystems, while strengthening agriculture resiliency and addressing climate risk. So we're working towards reducing soil disturbance through the use of reduced tillage and cover crops. We're also support responsibly managing inputs. So using the right amount of fertilizers and pesticides on the field and not over-applying.  

Look, this is a global practice. It's not new. But, you know, as we're finding places where we can improve soil health and protect water and air quality and then also support biodiversity and sequester carbon, it's something that we feel very strongly about and want to support on a global scale. 

Dusty Weis 

Now you're calling from the family farm in Missouri here, Justin… in fact, I think I hear some of the family in the background. Little kids, little critters running around in the background there. But being as you in addition to having this job with Bunge, work on the family farm as well. What have you been able to take from your experience at Bunge and implement as practices on your own farm? 

Justin McAllister 

Yeah, Dusty. So a lot of what I like to do on the farm, I kid my wife, I don't like to sleep. So between Bunge and farming, it, it keeps me very busy. 

Dusty Weis 

But that's what tractors have lights, right? 

Justin McAllister 

Exactly. And auto steer and all the other good stuff. Right. You know, one thing that I want to take away, or I always try to do on my own farm, is how can I put regenerative ag at scale on a commercial farm? Because we're talking to a lot of customers that this is their business. They do everything at scale.And so if I can't make it work, then why should I expect them to make it work? So I'm always looking for efficient ways to seed cover crops, which species work well in our program. I do multi-species cover crops across multiple fields and soil types.  

Also work with our nutrient management, be sure not to over apply and always looking for solutions, whether it's solutions to help with my nutrient cycling. I'm looking at biologicals as well, which is a new space in this arena. And then of course, the almighty one, reduced tillage. So when you don't have a lot of time that you also have some slopes that you don't want erosion to take over, you look for opportunities to be better at no-tilling. And so most of our ground is no-tilled these days. 

Something that my dad actually started doing a lot of the new innovative tools have come out with seed genetics and crop chemistry, but something that I've been able to take and run with and improve across a lot of our fields and seen very good results, not just in time management, but in keeping the soil in place. Being in north central Missouri, we have some decent ground, but, you know, we don't have the best, so we want to keep it all that we can. 

And then also getting back to the reduced tillage, no-till. And also that cover crop piece, you know, it's very important to us to try and keep the soils covered for most of the year as possible to help build organic matter, but also to keep that erosion in check. So and we've seen some great results from it.  

It's just working with the growers. It's an investment. It's not free. And so I always like to think about that when we're asking our farmer customers to take on these practices, knowing that this isn't free, that they will see some, you know, some efficiencies gained, some cost savings, hopefully. But it's an investment and we're trying to help them justify that investment and make their farms better for generations to come. 

Sally Flis 

Justin, you mentioned a few of them there. But as we think about where does this program go after the first three years, which we're getting into rolling out year three of signups for this, what are some of the other practices that you're excited about to introduce, either on your own farm or to the growers in this program that'll keep driving the sustainability metrics year over year and that continuous improvement pathway? 

Justin McAllister 

Yeah, we're mainly concentrating on soy today. You know, I think there's some very interesting technologies coming out from a nutrient standpoint. Products out there such as Nutrien’s Titan additive that helps with phosphate cycling. You know, I've seen some good results on my own farm from that product. I think there's a place for it in everyone's portfolio. 

But also biologicals. I mean, this is a space that we don't know a whole lot about yet. And I think it's going to continue to grow and open up a lot of opportunities for farmers to unlock some secrets in their soil. So adding those products in, but also adding that piece to the program to help farmers understand what's going on in their soil. 

So doing more analytics, you know, we keep finding new ways to measure the biology that's happening below the surface. And I think growers are going to be able to find a lot of efficiencies as they learn more about what's going on subsurface on their fields. So, you know, I think that's an exciting new frontier within this regenerative ag program. 

You know, I don't have a timeline yet on when we might be thinking about introducing some of these things, but I think these are some items that we're going to have to definitely consider going forward and then expanding outside of soy. I mean, Bunge's a handler of other grains as well. So corn, wheat. And so as we mature our program and look to provide solutions to our downstream and upstream customers, you know, there's definitely going to be some opportunities for us to start looking to implement programs that would also encompass those crops as well. 

And then from there, I mean, we're a global company, so we're looking at regenerative programs on a global scale and our South American and Europe footprint. And then also definitely looking at Canada as well. 

Dusty Weis 

Of course, Justin, with a program like this, finding new participants, finding growers who want to be a part of it is a really key part of the battle here to making progress. And when you're in your first year like this, I would imagine that it's kind of an uphill slog here. How do you go about finding new participants in the program, and is it going to come to a point when, instead of going to the growers on this, the growers are going to be coming to you? 

Do you think, how far out from that are we? 

Justin McAllister 

So at all our locations, our merchandizing staff has great relationship with our farmers. They know more than just trying to buy their grain and oilseeds. They know their family. They know where they live, reside, what they do in their communities. So we feel like we know a lot of our growers very well. So, you know, in the first year is actually fairly easy to put together a quick list of growers that we know would be interested in trying this new opportunity that we had to provide to them.  

But alongside just our own merchandizing staff. You know, Nutrien has a great, very similar approach to the communities that they work and operate in. I mean, their agronomists know their customers very well. And a lot of cases we have the same customer. 

So between both of our organizations going out, engaging growers, it was actually fairly simple to go and identify those growers. Anytime that we're trying to do something at scale, there's a lot of moving parts. So there's always some growing pains. But, you know, I feel like we're on the right track. And I think years two, three, four, we’re going to keep going out and engaging growers. 

But, you know, along the way, we did have a few growers that actually reached out to us that wanted to participate. And even first time participation farmers have come back to us to re-enroll, and they come back with a long list of questions, you know, how can I stack this program with other available programs in the market? They want to know or have some input on some of the ideas they have that they're thinking about implementing a different practice on their farm, and how that's going to impact their participation in the program. 

So a lot of really great conversations that we're really excited to have with growers, and hopefully we keep having more of them. 

Sally Flis 

Yeah, these programs aren’t simple, Justin, I think that's probably the biggest thing we've learned. I mean, Dusty said it earlier. We talk 2 or 3 times a week and sometimes it's about program stuff. Sometimes it's just about this larger landscape of reporting and what's coming next. And what are these other downstreams going to be required to do? 

What might growers be required to do going forward? And then when you look at that, our program spans across two countries and different crops. It gets pretty complicated pretty fast. So it's exciting to see that we've been successful working together and continuing to expand because as we've talked many times, I see this as an ever changing landscape of needs and reporting and what the different downstreams want to see and what they feel like their definition of regenerative ag is versus what Bunge might be thinking their definition of regenerative ag is, or the growers are thinking about when they look at regenerative ag. So it's definitely a dynamic space that we work in every day Justin. 

Dusty Weis 

And it sounds like word is starting to get out too. And we always say on this program that the fastest way to get people to adopt new changes is to get their neighbors to adopt the new changes and so certainly as folks are out there participating in this program, seeing the benefits from it, seeing the revenue from it, I would imagine that before too much longer here, they're going to be beating down your door. But to that end, if I'm a grower, I'm listening to the podcast right now and I'm sitting here looking ahead to 2025 and thinking, yeah, that might be something I'd be interested in. How do I go about getting involved? 

Justin McAllister 

You know, if you're tributary to any of the five locations I mentioned earlier in the podcast? Council Bluffs, Iowa. Decatur, Indiana. Moorestown, Indiana. Bellevue, Ohio. Delphos, Ohio. Definitely reach out to your local Bunge merchant. Also, please reach out to your local Nutrien Ag Solutions representative as well, because both can have the information and can guide the farmer into enrolling in the program. What's going to need to happen?  

I will say that, you know, we're getting ready to roll out our 2025 program. Not a lot of things have changed from year one of us releasing the program. So if the farmers are already engaged on the program or read some of the information we have, nothing's really changed. But a lot of the change starts now. 

So growers are going to start making plans around seeding their cover crops. What fields are going to be good candidates for that change in practice? And so all that happens here as we enter the final stage of growing the current crop in the ground.  

And then from there, enroll, start the data collection process, because there's a lot of data points that need to be collected. 

Doesn’t have to be hard. Nutrien has a great staff that works with growers to get that data into a usable form. But it does take some time. And then as they start making their plans, get that cover crop planted, if that's one of the practices they're going to change, start making plans around. If they're going to maybe approach it from a reduced tillage aspects. 

There's some investments that need to happen here over the winter season as they prepare for spring seeding, because this is… for this year going to target soybeans again. So these are fields that growers are going to seed as soybeans to participate in our program.  

But I'll do a little plug here for Sally's SNO program. You know if you've participated in the soil program previously and are rotating into corn, definitely please check out that program to keep the seamless transition from year to year. Pretty easy lift for the farmer. 

Dusty Weis 

Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes. That's what SNO is, just as a reminder. And of course, if you're a reader, not a listener, we'll put links in the episode description to information about all of these programs as well. But I got to say, it's really cool to hear that the program is growing, meeting with success and continuing to move forward here. 

And so it's been really great catching up with you folks from Bunge. Justin McAllister, Regenerative Agriculture Lead at Bunge. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the FARMSMART Podcast. 

Dusty Weis 

That’s going to conclude this episode of The FARMSMART Podcast. New episodes arrive every month, so make sure you subscribe to The FARMSMART Podcast in your favorite app and visit nutrienagsolutions.com/FARMSMART to learn more.  

The FARMSMART Podcast is brought to you by Nutrien Ag Solutions, with editing by Emily Kaysinger.   

The FARMSMART Podcast is produced by Podcamp Media, branded podcast production for businesses. podcampmedia.com.  

I’m Dusty Weis. For Nutrien Ag Solutions, thanks for listening.