Innovations

Syngenta’s Good Growth Plan

Thirty-six hundred farmers worldwide are tracking their sustainability through Syngenta’s Good Growth Plan. Jill Wheeler, head of sustainable productivity for North America for Syngenta, tells Brownfield Ag News it will help measure crop sustainability through the year 2020, “Of course there are as many ways to define sustainability as I think there are people working in the industry. But, ultimately, it needs to be a system that can continue indefinitely.”

Wheeler says farmers are tracking those measurements through Syngenta’s AgriEdge Excelsior farm management system that’s incorporated sustainability metrics from the Field to Market® alliance, “They also have fantastic reporting in regards to compliance for regulatory purposes as well as just seeing how they can improve the return on their investment.”

She says 21 crops are being evaluated for productivity in 42 countries, “The way that we are working in the United States is that we actually work with downstream partners such as Kellogg’s, General Mills, other people who are very interested in sustainability. So, a lot of our work is driven by which commodities do have these high interest in really tracking these metrics.”

Wheeler says the goal is to feed the growing number of mouths throughout the world and to do that sustainably, “it all comes down to data.”