It is a hot, dry August day, but Steve Lawler of the Mower Soil and Water Conservation District just made it rain 1 inch on the Krell family farm. On one small corner of the farm, anyway. He is demonstrating how different soil management techniques retain rainwater. If that sounds dry, it’s because the subtext is the interesting part — better rainwater retention means more nutrients stay in the soil. For farmers, that translates to better yields.
This demonstration is part of a Cedar River Watershed Partnership farm event, where a coalition of private, public and nonprofit groups addresses challenges to water resources in the Cedar River Watershed, like flooding and sedimentation.
This demonstration is part of a Cedar River Watershed Partnership farm event, where a coalition of private, public and nonprofit groups addresses challenges to water resources in the Cedar River Watershed, like flooding and sedimentation.
Government regulation can be a blessing or a burden. In every case, it’s the result of a public process. In contrast, says Domtar CEO John D. Williams, too many of today’s extra-governmental, voluntary programs — shadow regulations — fall short of this process. Shadow regulations are built on opaque algorithms and are of nebulous value, and they threaten the very transparency that legitimate sustainability regulations are supposed to advance.
The Smithfield Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Smithfield Foods, Inc., is pleased to announce a donation of $25,000 to continue its partnership with the University of Minnesota’s NorthStar Initiative for Sustainable Enterprise (NorthStar), a nonprofit research entity that aims to improve the understanding of sustainability within global production and consumption systems, and to develop research and tools to improve the sustainability of these systems.
As companies are becoming increasingly focused on the social impact of their business operations, Deloitte has developed a new Social Impact Measurement Model (SIMM), pioneering a machine learning tool that forecasts the results of a large corporate investment – such as opening a new office or headquarters – on a community, across more than 75 social measures.