Feed Chats: Episode 2 with Jim Sutter

Episode 2 of Feed Chats had CEO of USSEC, Jim Sutter, join as a guest with Alexander Döring, Secretary General at FEFAC, moderating the session. The episode is dedicated to a joint webinar FEFAC and AFIA are holding on 19 October about feed industry solutions to contribute to the reduction of GHG emissions in the livestock sector in view of the COP 26 climate conference moving to a zero-net economy.

Alexander Döring started the session by asking Sutter what USSEC is doing in Europe and other parts of the world with sustainable soy supply. He explained that USSEC’s job is to “differentiate, build a preference, and ensure market access for US soy”. Sutter went on to say that approximately 10 years ago USSEC started to discuss with FEFAC about the subject of sustainability and how we have all learned a lot in that space of time. He continued to say “It is certainly becoming much more of a topic of mind than it was 10 years ago, so we’re glad that we have that subject in common and we’re very proud of the work we’ve done in this area”.

The session continued discussing the recent EU/US led global methane the recent EU/US led global methane pledge for the upcoming COP26 climate summit in Glasgow and asked Sutter how could US soy farmers help the feed industry and livestock farmers reducing their own sectoral emissions to achieve climate-neutral status of their operations. Sutter responded by bringing it back to the US farmer and how 97% of them are family ran farms. Sutter also went on to say that “their goal is to be able to pass their farm on to the next generation and I think that really fits in with sustainability, greenhouse gas emissions and climate footprint as they want to make sure they’re taking good care of the farm and the environment so it can be passed on”.

The final topic was to discuss with COP26, what does Sutter see as the main messages coming from the climate summit and where does USSEC see the next milestones for a science-based approach to address the climate agenda. Sutter responded by saying that the global population is growing up to 170,000 a day towards 2050 and that “we need to be able to figure out how to produce more food for these people”  With the discussion point of COP26 and the UN Food Systems Summit, “It is so important to have a good balance between doing things in the proper environmental way but also protecting the opportunity for farmers to utilize tools that will increase their productivity through innovation and new technology so that we can produce enough food in an economic way for the growing population”.

Alexander Döring wrapped up the session referring back to the FEFAC-AFIA joint webinar on feed industry solutions to contribute to the reduction of GHG emissions in the livestock sector where we will hear more about the topic from scientists, experts, farmers and feed producers. Register for the event here.