Ingeo News: November 2021

This fall NatureWorks was invited to participate in several events focusing on the bioeconomy and the future contributions of U.S.-based agriculture. We highlight two of them here.

I. Bioeconomy Advancements
In Nebraska, home of our first manufacturing facility, Rich Altice, President & CEO of NatureWorks, participated in the Bioeconomy Advancements panel at Husker Harvest Days. The panel discussed how plant-based products are opening new markets for American agriculture, creating rural development opportunities, and advancing the growth of a circular bioeconomy. The forum was a good opportunity to share that industrial markets like ours are looking for efficient, 3rd party certified sustainably grown agricultural feedstocks in order to meet demand for plant-based products that meet global sustainability criteria.

For example, circular economy frameworks, like that from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, designed to tackle the problem of plastics and analyses like “Breaking the Plastic Wave” by The Pew Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ, are all specifying that we need to look to biobased materials made from responsibly sourced renewable feedstocks like agriculture to deliver solutions that have a low carbon footprint and more options for how we throw things away, like compostability.

It’s those frameworks and that sentiment around “responsibly sourced” that have spurred our customers, brandowners, and retailers to take deep interest in how to grow renewable feedstocks, according to sustainable and, increasingly, regenerative agricultural principles. Read more.

II. The Future of Agriculture
In September, Leah Ford, NatureWorks Sr. Marketing & Communications Manager, participated in the Dorsey & Whitney’s inaugural The Future of Agriculture roundtable, which featured USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack as the keynote speaker. Secretary Vilsack’s remarks emphasized infrastructure needs to support farmers and labor policy. Following the Secretary’s speech, there was a symposium discussion with leaders in the food and agriculture industry to discuss their thoughts on what lies ahead in production agriculture with regard to farming, processing and distributing our food and bioproducts globally in a low carbon and sustainable manner.

In the symposium, Ford highlighted how the focus on infrastructure in support of agriculture should expand to include composting infrastructure. Compostable products destined for this infrastructure are indeed a quickly growing downstream market that makes use of agricultural feedstocks, but perhaps more importantly, compost infrastructure has positive impacts on climate change and soil health.

Growing access to composting makes it easier to keep food waste out of landfills where it generates methane. In fact, food breaking down in landfills is the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the US. Instead, food waste is diverted to composting where it contributes to a nutrient-rich soil amendment that improves both biodiversity and the soil’s ability to sequester more CO2. In turn, that compost can be used in agriculture to improve or maintain soil health in the future.