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As part of our Better Days Promise to support 1 million farmers and workers by the end of 2030, Kellogg provided a grant to The Nature Conservancy in 2019 to help boost participation in their STAR in Illinois, where the program has its roots.    

Farmers have the daunting responsibility of caring for millions of acres of land. We rely on them for the quality ingredients that go into our iconic foods.  

That’s why Kellogg Company works with partner organizations, like The Nature Conservancy, to help farmers in the U.S. and across the world learn and implement climate-positive agricultural practices that help nurture our planet while boosting their yields. 

Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources (STAR) is a free tool that helps farmers self-evaluate the sustainability of the agricultural practices they use on their own land. Created by farmers, for farmers, STAR encourages farmers and landowners to use management practices and make decisions that will reduce the nutrient and soil losses on their fields—and, ultimately, over larger areas, including watersheds.  

STAR evaluates farmers’ conservation practices, such as crop rotation, tillage, and nutrient application, against localized criteria, after which they are assigned a rating of 1 to 5 stars. A high STAR rating recognizes farmers who are actively working to protect soil health and water quality and even prevent greenhouse gas emissions. Farmers who sign up for STAR also get access to technical information, expert consultants, and peer networks to help them choose the conservation practices that work for their land and can raise their STAR ratings. 

And the program works: in 2020 alone, the use of winter hardy cover crops by STAR farmers provided climate benefits equal to removing 16,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions—the equivalent of taking 3,525 passenger cars from the road for one year.