U.S. Grains Council Corn Sustainability Program: Year In Review

Feb 14, 2024

The first step taken involved corn and the launching of two baseline tools, the Corn Sustainability Assurance Protocol (CSAP) and the Sustainable Corn Exports (SCE) web platform, to engage with international stakeholders on sustainability. In the past year, the Council has made a strong push to create awareness and drive adoption of these tools and is proud to communicate that stakeholders have responded positively to these efforts. Looking forward, the Council’s work on sustainability is likely to expand, as sustainability requirements continue to increase and commodities including barley and sorghum also move to respond to these challenges.

Corn sustainability baseline: operationalized for international markets

The CSAP and the SCE web platform were developed by the Council to support corn growers and the industry in addressing sustainability requirements across international supply chains. The CSAP was created with the goal of providing international stakeholders the full scope of the laws and regulations that underpin sustainable production in U.S. origin corn and its associated products, across multiple impact categories.

The SCE web platform leverages the CSAP’s definition of U.S. sustainable corn volumes allowing exporters and importers of U.S. corn products to issue shipment-specific documentation to satisfy sustainability requirements in international markets. These documents are called Records of Sustainability, which U.S. exporters provide to international customers at no cost, to satisfy current entry-level sustainability requirements.

Creating awareness and driving adoption

Over the last year, the Council has led more than 15 major engagements with supply chain stakeholders across the world, which included in-person, hybrid and virtual events, as well as in-country agendas with direct engagements with major customers in prioritized markets. The result of these programs allowed the Council to directly reach more than 1,600 stakeholders across key geographies, further amplified by the reach of communications through social and traditional media.

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Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.