Managing for Profit

Sustainability efforts add to growers’ bottom line

Sustainability is more than a buzz word to Bill Beam, who chairs the United Soybean Board’s Freedom to Operate Committee.  Beam, who farms in Pennsylvania, knows what it’s like to conserve water.  Water conservation is a cornerstone to sustainability, says Beam, and soybean growers have been doing that for a long time.

Beam uses technology to help conserve natural resources in general, and to remain sustainable.  Following the example set by his father, Beam is the second generation on that land to employ no-till farming.  That technology, he says, outdoes much of what he has adopted since then to conserve resources.  The result, economically, is that efforts to become more sustainable are incidentally good for a grower’s bottom line.

AUDIO: Bill Beam (3 min. MP3)