The Sustainable Ag Summit highlighted the growing pressures on U.S.
agriculture, emphasizing the importance of conservation practices,
collaboration across the supply chain, and a focus on aligned standards for long-term sustainability.
By: Julie Savoie, Senior Director, Workforce, Talent & Sustainability, FMI
My grandfather was a row crop farmer in Buckley, Illinois, a town of only 500 people, and I spent the first 18 summers of my life there, so attending the Field to Market Fall Meeting and the Sustainable Ag Summit in Anaheim this year resonated with me on a personal level. Some of my favorite memories are of riding in the back of his truck with my cousins and neighbor kids as he rumbled across the fields and gravel roads. In the 80s, no one thought twice about a group of grandkids bouncing around in the truck bed. Agriculture was not some amorphous concept just to me. It was family, community and the values that shaped who I am today.
The Sustainable Ag Summit is co-hosted each year by Field to Market and the Innovation Center for US Dairy, bringing together leaders from every part of the value chain. It also marked an exciting milestone for FMI, as we recently joined Field to Market, deepening our connection with the growers and partners who make our food system possible and strengthening the support we can offer to grocery retailers and consumer brands.
Across the sessions, one message stood out. US agriculture is facing real and growing pressure. Farmers spoke candidly about rising costs, water scarcity, complicated program requirements and the challenge of keeping multigenerational operations viable. They emphasized that conservation practices such as no till farming, cover crops and precision nutrient management have become essential tools for long term resilience, not nice to haves.
Many discussions also reinforced the growing importance of collaboration across the supply chain. Companies up and downstream are beginning to work together in new ways to support farmers, share data and unlock sustainability outcomes that is difficult for an individual organization to achieve alone. This includes both vertical collaboration, where brands and retailers partner with their suppliers and growers, and horizontal collaboration, where companies that would traditionally see each other as competitors find common ground to accelerate progress. These partnerships are becoming essential as the industry moves toward shared reporting standards, coordinated investments and joint efforts to strengthen supply chain resilience.
Broader economic trends added context to these challenges. In the keynote at the Field to Market Fall Meeting, Corey Geiger of CoBank described shifting global protein markets, declining row crop profitability, unpredictable trade conditions and new strains on rural electrical grids as data centers expand nationwide. These forces directly shape the stability and cost structure of the supply chains that grocery retailers and brands rely on.
For the food industry, the takeaway is clear. The resilience of our supply chains depends on the resilience of the farmers and ranchers who anchor them. Tools such as Field to Market’s updated Fieldprint Platform, new regenerative agriculture guidance, and emerging financing models can support retailers and brands in partnering with growers, reducing uncertainty in Scope 3 reporting and strengthening long term sourcing. The Summit theme, United Agriculture for Resilient Outcomes, reinforced that meaningful progress requires shared incentives, aligned standards and collaboration across the full value chain.
As FMI’s Senior Director of Sustainability and Workforce, attending this Summit reminded me that this work is both professional and personal. For me, it will always come back to that Buckley farm and to the people who showed me that agriculture is a way of caring for land, family and community all at once.
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