Keys to Success in Buying Sustainable Grain

Here are 5 steps for helping grain farmers start marketing their data.

Heading into the new year, grain producers are facing new corporate programs asking for more information to score environmental impacts. Companies all up the supply chain are losing market access in the absence of field-level data to prove environmental stewardship on the farms they originate grain from.

Whether front-line grain buyers like it or not, data collection and validation is becoming part of their job. This is challenging because the ‘top growers’ (who represent the typical 20% that generate 80% of sales) are not creating the data these new markets are demanding.

In order to fulfill the role of identifying and ground-truthing local farms whose production systems are worth more, grain elevator staff are going to need new training, language and financial incentives. As long as these employees are compensated exclusively on profits and handling volumes, they’ll continue to misplace attention on farmer sellers with less appealing origin stories.

So, what if you manage a team of grain buyers responsible for contracting and purchasing from primary producers, and some of those are regenerative farmers? Here are some tips for creating internal incentives and external market value, by empowering new teams to properly execute sustainable grain origination programs.