St. Louis-Monsanto Co. is joining with The Nature Conservancy, the Iowa Soybean Assn., Delta Wildlife, and other agriculture and conservation interests in a new initiative to keep nutrients and sediment out of the Mississippi River. Monsanto is putting up $5 million to help study the best conservation techniques to lower nutrient and sediment concentrations by reducing agriculture runoff, coordinate outreach efforts that include monitoring and evaluating on-farm resources, and research and install best management practices on approximately 1,000 sites on working farms to reduce off-site movement of nutrients and sediments while benefiting fish and wildlife habitat and water conservation. Data collected from all projects will be reported annually to generate novel approaches that can be more broadly implemented across rural landscapes. At the same time, Audubon will communicate these best practices throughout the Mississippi River watershed to raise awareness of how everyone can be good stewards of nature in their own backyards. And Monsanto will work actively with all groups to share data generated from all projects with its farmer customers. The company will also encourage on-farm adoption of management practices that contribute to water quality.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain