Our sustainability efforts aren’t limited to a single department; they’re shared throughout the company. Arguably the area in which this sustainability effort is most prevalent is within our manufacturing operations. Our people have always produced and supplied exceptional products for our customers. Now, we’re looking not just at making exceptional products, but making the process of how we make these products exceptional. Everything from the resources we use to cultivate, grow and package our seeds, to the shipping of our products from factory to farm.

We’ve been involved in sustainability since the 1990s. But our growing commitment to tools like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has provided us with a way to illustrate and record our involvement. Our teams always made it a point to tour our facilities and measure their resource expenditures. When our focus shifted to agriculture, we found that the recording of data within the industry wasn’t as rigorous. But that didn’t stop us from being responsible and continuing to explore new ways to do business that were more sustainable. This report gives us a chance to share some of the great stories our company, our business partners and farmers have wanted to tell for some time. For us, sustainability isn’t just monitoring and policing. It’s illuminating the way things can and should be done.

Our commitment to sustainable practices is further cemented with our addition of a Global Manufacturing Sustainability Director. This position is responsible for a broad scope of work, looking not only at ways to conserve inputs during the production of row crop and vegetable seeds, but also looking beyond seed manufacturing to breeding, biotechnology and crop protection activities for ways to improve sustainability.

Additionally, it’s our hope that the specific sustainability networks within the businesses will take the innovations that are already occurring and translate them to company-wide implementation, where feasible. For example, if one site uses discharge from municipal water treatment to irrigate their crops, can other sites apply this practice? These networks will seek to apply the best sustainability ideas rapidly across the company.

Our internal Sustainability Strategy Council has put forth an aggressive sustainability platform, and our manufacturing operations team has incorporated this vision into their FOCUS list of priorities.

GRI EN 6 The FOCUS initiative was created as a mission statement for our manufacturing processes. These priorities are as follows:

Freedom to Operate

Model safety, health and environmental excellence

Ensure compliant business practices

Implement and support Monsanto’s Human Rights initiatives

Operational Excellence

Deliver high quality products and services

Implement cost effective, flexible and reliable processes

Effectively support new product launches and commercial innovation

Leverage technology to improve cost, quality and product performance

Customer and Partner Focused

Excel in customer service

Become our customers’ supplier of choice

Strengthen our role as a vital Monsanto business partner

Unlock Potential

Develop our talent and provide opportunities for growth

Create a culture of innovation, where great ideas flourish

Support communities

Sustainability

Employ sustainable and efficient operations from supplier to customer

Reduce our environmental footprint and continuously measure performance

Sustainability could fit under a number of these categories, but we wanted to give it its own priority. We apply these principles throughout our supply chain across all 300 of our owned, contracted and leased resources, in over 35 countries.

Additionally, the GRI framework is an important tool that we can add to our internal initiatives. It’s our hope that we start with a set number of indicators and with every passing year, we’ll do more and more, with a desired goal of eventually reporting on all material environmental indicators. It’s an ongoing process, and we’re committed to seeing it through.