Honey Nut Cheerios shares North American pollinator commitment - June 2016

Thursday, June 23, 2016

As the Principal Agronomist at General Mills, it's my job to stay close to the farming community as we all look for ways to increase productivity and feed our growing population in a sustainable way. Readers may know that General Mills has been working with farmers since the early 1900s. This connection to agriculture is a large part of our company history and one we rely on for our business. As an extension of that, we recently made the commitment to work with oat farmers to dedicate 3,300 acres to pollinator habitats by 2020 to help maintain the nutritional health of bees and the continued supply of crops we depend on for food.

Bees have experienced an unprecedented scale of habitat loss with more than nine million acres of grass and prairie land converted to crop land since 2008. Pollinator habitats are one of the most effective solutions in ensuring bees get the daily nutrition they need. Bees need a variety of good nutrition in their diets, just like humans. We are in the business of making food, and experts agree we can't grow the crops needed for the food we eat if we don't maintain robust pollinator populations.

Honey Nut Cheerios' commitment means that acreage totaling the equivalent of about 3,000 football fields will be planted in partnership with the Xerces Society, a leading pollinator and wildlife conservation organization. We're making this commitment because we know that without bees, food as we know it would be changed forever.

Tom Rabaey
Research Agronomist,
Sustainable Agriculture
General Mills
Minnesota, United States