Transcript
Speaker: Hello, my name is Stephen Kilgore. I'm the managing editor of Feeding Grain magazine and the host of the Feeding Grain podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries. so Today's episode is brought to you by the Benwip from New Mat Systems. The powerful dual impact Benwip removes the toughest buildup and blockages in industrial storage silos so without hazardous silo entry.
Speaker: Learn more today at binwhip .com. My guest today is Beth Stebbins, Customer Sustainability Manager at Schooler. Beth is here to talk about Schooler's Annual Sustainability Report, what programs they've offered over the last year to encourage growers and employees to take part in environmental programs, community charities, and promoting a safety culture. Plus, we talk about their grain elevator of the future, where they test new technologies to increase energy efficiency and environmental sustainability at their grain elevators. I wasn't recording in a normal location for this interview, so my audio quality is worse than normal. Sorry about that, but I hope you still enjoy the rest of the interview. If you want to help out with the podcast and are listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe. If you're listening online, sign up for the Phoenix Gray newsletter, Industry Watch, to see you when new podcasts drop and stay up to date with all the news from around the industry. And if you're attending IPPE or the Jeeps Exchange this year, please stop by our booth or heck, stop me in the hall.
Speaker: I'd love to hear what listeners have to say about the podcast and of course what they'd like to hear in 2025. Now onto the show. Hi Beth. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Of course. Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Speaker: Yeah, happy to. For anyone who might not be familiar with you, can you tell me a little bit about what you do with Schooler and your relationship with the industry? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the director of sustainability at Schooler, so I lead all of our different sustainability initiatives across the enterprise.
Speaker: I've been there for about two years and previously I did a similar role at an oatmeal and company leading their sustainability initiatives and actually come from the grain side of things more than sustainability side of things because I have a master's in serial science from North Dakota State University and I currently reside in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We love the great side of things so we won't hold that against you at all.
Speaker: but appreciate it but we really appreciate because this is actually the second year we're doing a podcast schooler big annual sustainability report. I mean, obviously sustainability is such a huge topic in the industry right now. And what I love about you guys at Schooler is just how much you're making it a main priority in your company and how open and honest and visible you're being with the entire process for both you and the rest of the industry, many of which are kind of trying to figure out which direction to go.
Speaker: Yeah, appreciate that. Yeah, we don't know everything, but it's just important to get started. I think a key part of your whole sustainability outlook is your five sustainability pillars. Could you talk a little bit about the pillars and how they align with the company's overall strategic sustainability objectives?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of divide pillars up under two umbrellas. So our first two sustainability pillars are what you typically think of in the sustainability area, and those are more environmentally focused. So that's reducing our carbon footprint internally at Schooler. So Just running our business using fewer natural resources and then also fostering responsible product sourcing so that's just making sure of all the commodities we buy and trade and send through the supply chain. We're working with their those third parties to both sources ethically and then also help to reduce the amount of resources they need and growing or procuring those commodities.
Speaker: And then our other three pillars are more aligned with the people side of things. So allowing us to be a good neighbor and employer of choice. So that but the first one in that umbrella is engaging in our communities. So that's just focusing on volunteering and giving back to the communities where our employees work and live. Next one is promoting diversity and inclusion. So just making sure that anybody can succeed at school or no matter what their background is and uplifting folks to To be the best employees that they can be and then last up holding workplace health and safety pretty intuitive there that we want everyone to go home the same way they arrive to work. And the way i see these a lot of our strategic objectives are maybe a little bit different depending on the pillar but.
Speaker: I think overall in the environment side of things we want to be a leader in the sustainability solution space. So we want to work with our both growers and end -use customers to develop programs that help achieve their goals. So for growers that might be improving their soil health and then for end -use customers helping to report on their sustainability goals and be compliant with different government and regulations.
Speaker: And then on the more people side of the pillars, I think just working in these areas help us to be an employer of choice, which really helps us to attract and retain top talent. And those help us succeed in the sustainability arena more in just ah sustaining ourselves as a company. If we can attract top talent and be a great place to work, we can be around for in the industry for another 130 years.
Speaker: Yes, sustainability, I think unfairly gets often thought of as only an environmental term or goal, but in reality is it is sustainability of your company overall. A big part of that is the people, especially nowadays when it is increasingly challenging to attract and retain talented people at facilities and in agribusiness.
Speaker: Yeah, I say it a lot. that Sustainability is not just about the environment and it's it's good to have that outlook and not just about our employees too, that we want to have good reputations in the communities where we operate, not be a burden at all, but being seen as a net benefit. Exactly. And one of your your pillars that's really interested to move is your safety pillar.
Speaker: and What you guys are doing for that, because in your report, you mentioned that you have a 32 % increase in safety engagement. And is as industries and feed manufacturing, grain elevator season, we all know how important sustainability is, safety is, and the constant struggle to keep that message at the forefront.
Speaker: What specific strategies and initiatives are you guys working at to get such a big improvement in your engagement over these years? Yeah, it's a great question. So we know grain elevators can be dangerous places to work. So we want safety to be first and foremost in people's minds that nothing ever gets put above safety, which is easy to say, but just making sure we're building that culture, I think is the most important thing. So we did a few different things over the last fiscal year. And I think the first I want to highlight is we brought on a new enterprise director of safety, Tom Kollross, who's
Speaker: a leader in the industry and it's just helping making sure we put procedures in place to make sure we're an industry leader in safety and that nobody's getting hurt. He's put a lot of processes in place to get that employee buy -in down at the facility level. so Something i've heard a lot about is our hazard id process so we empower any employee at the company to input a hazard they identify into our safety system. To either just point out a hazard or suggest safety of improvements and the way that flows through our system is that those suggestions or observations have to get signed off by their manager to make sure it's either been addressed or implemented to make sure nothing is falling on deaf ears.
Speaker: And our each and s our environmental health and safety team has gone out and audited all of our facilities over the last years just making sure. Everybody is doing everything they say they're going to do they're up to date on the latest sustainability strategies and then i think the last thing we're doing to build that culture of safety is.
Speaker: At the end of the fiscal year our CEO went out and visited facilities with good safety records so just kind of walking the walk and showing that when we say safety is becomes before anything before working quickly profitability we mean it he's going out there and thanking everybody for doing that hard work and staying safe. Yeah well it's important to get that by because everyone knows it's easy to.
Speaker: have policies and procedures on a page, but to actually get people to buy in and to be involved and get some thinking about safety all the time, which is key to staying vigilant. Yeah, absolutely. All about culture. Exactly.
Speaker: Well, another really interesting project that you guys listed in your sustainability report, which is, I should say, available online. There will be a link to it in the description of this podcast. So I encourage anyone to go over there and check it out. But you launched a regenerative agriculture pilot program this past year. Can you tell us a little bit about that program, how it works, what the benefits you anticipate for farmers and end users to be?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm super excited about this project. It took up a lot of my time over the past year, but I'm really excited about how it turned out. So the way this project works is we did this in a few select geographies at Schooler. So pretty limited in scope for right now because it's a pilot, but growers can sign up from a list of regenerative practices, like reduced tillage and cover crops that they're either interested or just fit their operation best. So it was very important to us that we didn't have a one size fits all approach. We didn't want something prescriptive.
Speaker: We know our geography is wide and no two operations are like so we want to growers to make decisions that work best for their operations so they signed up for the program last winter and then throughout the crop year they implemented those practices so either did that that no till maybe reduce nitrogen use, all those sorts of things, and then logged our management data in our online portal throughout the year. So then at harvest time, they came in and added in their last information. So while their yield data, any last nutrient management passes, all those sorts of things, made sure everything was in the system. And right now our data management partner is currently
Speaker: Calculating not only the total acres and practices and growers we have in the program but also the carbon benefits that we're getting from growers using those practices so we can kind of see. Any car being sequestered and emission factors coming in the grain so just getting more information from that grain and we can share that with our customers so.
Speaker: It's super cool because those growers are getting incentive cash payment incentives on using these practices and then also obviously getting the benefit of increased soil health or maybe reducing inputs to save a little money on their operation.
Speaker: So on the end -use customer side, they get that information from the growers about the grain that they're using in their supply chains. Not only the the carbon information, but also the practices used, and then just a little bit more information about the growers who are producing it. And I think that's one of the really cool things maybe isn't as tangible to share in a report is just bringing that whole supply chain together.
Speaker: We had a couple of good opportunities to do that within the regenerative agriculture program at school or this year. Last March, we had one of our milling partners, Miller Milling, out to Western Kansas. We got them together with some of the growers in the program and they actually sponsored a field day that we did with Understanding Egg out there for some of the growers to learn a little bit more about regenerative practices and then this past august we had another grower events that we called more than dirt for. Growers to learn about again regenerative practices from local leaders and we had our other company we're partnering with in this project robo tree mix who's the biggest flour miller in mexico.
Speaker: They came out from mexico out to adrian missouri to spend the day to learn with growers about regenerative practices and also got to visit a few of the farms and growers who are a part of the project and i think that's just a super cool opportunities for both our growers and our end users to.
Speaker: learn a little bit more about each other to connect the supply chain and it it really just makes the world feel a lot smaller when you can just kind of see the whole value chain together the customers see where their wheat is coming from the growers seeing the food products for the wheat ends up and that's just a really cool opportunity to be able to to bring that whole supply chain together.
Speaker: ah Yeah. I mean, once again, like we talked about with safety, it's all about getting people involved in the process. And it is, includes growers who often want to do these practices, but don't know where to start or need that incentive. And then the value chain who needs to know how they can also message and market their own products, especially with, I don't know.
Speaker: if you call it lack of trust in the public in our food system, the more visibility, the better across the entire board, right? Yeah, absolutely. At the end of the day, we're all just humans. And I think we can never underestimate the power of a simple conversation.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely. And the other thing that I'm really interested in, what it comes back to that kind of messaging to the public, to the community is your community impact grant program in 2024. How does that align with your community engagement goals and what types of projects has it been supporting so far? It's always really interesting to see companies give back to the communities that ultimately allow us to do what we do.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a super cool program. It makes me something really proud to work at a company like Schooler. So this grant program is funded through the Schooler Foundation. So that's where we give back 2 % of our profit before tax to different initiatives that are important to the employees that work for Schooler and the communities we operate in.
Speaker: So the program aligns with our goals as any employee in the company can nominate a small to mid -sized nonprofit that is active in their community. So where it's really important to align ourselves in operating on a very local level so so that the folks that are sometimes even working at school are seeing these benefits directly through foundations that are important to them or just see the benefits directly in the community.
Speaker: And you can kind of see the diversity in our employee base and what's important to them in the projects we funded through this program. So we funded three projects in FY 24 in the community impact grant program. So the first one through the Phillips fundamental learning center in Wichita, Kansas. So that grant help fund teachers to help dyslexic children read and write.
Speaker: The second grant went to the Bourbon Women Foundation, so that helped fund scholarships to help women gain experience in distilling, which is an industry that historically women were underrepresented, male -dominated, so of just bringing opportunities to women in that field.
Speaker: And then the third grant went to Access Period, which distributes menstrual products to communities in Nebraska. And that grant will specifically help serve schools in rural Nebraska that may not have as many resources to distribute menstrual products to their student bodies. So you can see there's a wide variety of interests in what we help fund at Schuler, but all at ah a very local level to make sure we can have impacts in the communities where we operate.
Speaker: No, I love it. It's all employee driven. So it's programs that they care about and they want to help. And I love that it is also showing that we are involved in these communities in more that of a way than just, you know, ag organizations. A lot of outreach tends to be towards, you know, FFA and ah those kinds of organizations, which are great, great organizations.
Speaker: But employees in our companies, they touch so many other parts of the community. So it's really nice to see people getting represented there represented there as well. Yeah, absolutely. I love seeing especially the investment we make in rural communities where there aren't as many resources and that's our bread and butter that we couldn't operate if we didn't have grain elevators and excellent employees ah across rural communities in the Midwest. So it's great to see and see that work happen.
Speaker: Yeah, especially because there might not be as many companies and things to pick up those sponsors and grant opportunities in some rural communities. So it's really nice to see. Yeah, absolutely. So the report also mentions your sustainability showcase hub. Can you tell me a little bit more about this and what it's all about?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So this falls under our reducing our carbon footprint pillar, but we touch a few other of our sustainability pillars on this project as well. But we've been working on this project for about two years. It's located at our Adrian Missouri facility, and which is just about an hour south of our office in Overland Park, Kansas, which is ah strategically selected as it's an easy, relatively easy place for folks to to go down and visit close enough to a major airport so we can bring customers down there as as a way to show off what we're doing in that space. So the overall idea and approach in this project is to design the grain elevator of the future.
Speaker: So we just looked at all the different aspects of the operation there and started thinking about projects we could implement to reduce the resources we use in the grain handling process. So it's been a super fun project to be a part of because we're really thinking outside the box. So a couple of things we implemented over the last fiscal year.
Speaker: we're doing our first solar panel installation. So we finished that last March and did a solar array down there that generates over 100 % of our electricity in the sunny months where it's getting a lot of solar power down there. So just really reducing our reliance on grid electricity.
Speaker: And then the other big initiative we completed over the last fiscal year was installing variable frequency drive motors or VFDs on our grain bunker fans down there. So these are just super big piles of rain that have a tarp on top of them to protect that grain against the element. And there's fans that run continuously to keep those tarps held down so they're not being blown off by the wind.
Speaker: So previously those fans just ran at 100 % speed, 100 % of the time. It doesn't seem like a big, big deal, but those fans are actually our biggest source of electricity consumption at that elevator. So what we did was install motors that modulate based on the wind speed so that if it's a really windy day, they have to run at 100 % capacity to keep that tarp down. That's fine. But if it's a calm day, those fans can run a lot lower and save us a lot of electricity.
Speaker: final numbers on the reduction on electricity consumption we're seeing on that. It's been a really good learning experience and we're really impressed, especially on how the variable frequency drive motors have worked out. And that's something that we're currently looking at installing at a few of our other facilities from our learnings in the project, which was actually the original aim that we just want to trial technology at this one facility, scope it out and see is going to work in other elevators or is this maybe not worth a lift.
Speaker: a one -time trial, but maybe not worth bringing to other facilities. So we're currently scoping out another two variable frequency drive projects at school or facilities to bring those learnings to other operations. And we're still working on other emissions reductions projects down at Adrian. So we're doing some research on if you want to put in electric trucks down there. I have talked about other electric equipment, like maybe some battery operated skid steers and then our trialing different things such as recyclable tarps for those grain bunkers because currently they end up in the trash year over year. So anything we can do to divert that from the landfill is a benefit. So it's a really cool project and we're really excited for phase two on bringing those learnings to other elevators at Schooler. It sounds really cool. I don't know, maybe we can visit next time we're in the area because it sounds like you guys are doing some pretty amazing things down there.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm sure we'd love to show it off. Looking ahead, what do you guys think are your most significant challenges coming into this new year? 2025 is going to be a big change, I think, across agriculture.
Speaker: Yeah, I could talk all day about challenges, but I'll keep it brief. And if I were to highlight one thing in our space, that's always a challenge is just the lack of standardization. So there's no one size fits all in the regen egg or carbon world. Obviously there's different protocols out there, but.
Speaker: There's not one program that we can all sign up for that's going to solve all the world's problems or that will make all our customers happy. So for us at Schooler, that really means that a project for a wheat miller is going to look a lot different than a project for an ethanol plant.
Speaker: But I think with that challenge comes great opportunity that we at Schooler really like to work with these different customers and figure out what their goals are and what their definitions of success are and design something that will work for the end user and then also for the grower because at the end of the day, growers are our customers as well and we're not going to implement anything that we don't see being beneficial on the grower end of the supply chain. So that's really something we're ready to meet the challenge of here at Schooler. And then just something else I want to highlight is a big opportunity in the space is I just really like the ability to tell the story of what our growers are already doing well.
Speaker: I feel like it's really easy to demonize agriculture in the media and in in a lot of climate coverage that farmers are seen as quote unquote the bad guys but I think growers are really doing a lot of awesome things already and I i really applaud the work we've done at Schooler to bring that message out into the world. So a good example of that is we have a farm advisory council at Schooler so this is a group of progressive minded farmers that we consult on different decisions that affect our growers. We also use these growers a lot as spokespeople about awesome things that are happening in agriculture. So for example, we have a soybean grower in Illinois that planting pollinator habitats on his land, not because somebody's necessarily paying him or somebody told him to do it, but just because he thinks it's an awesome thing to do and is helping bringing wildlife back to his operation. So I think
Speaker: The more we can tell the stories of what's happening already it again going back to our earlier conversation about relationships and bring the supply chain together i think we can see similarities and what's already happening that's going well and then continue that journey of continuous improvement to do even better down the line.
Speaker: Yeah, well, individuals, I think, are always the best messengers for anything like this. And right it is unfair sometimes because I've actually never met any grower or producer who, you know, wanted to leave their land in worse shape than to not be able to pass it on to the next generation. Yeah, absolutely. So they're always willing to try things and do things. It's just about giving them the incentives to do so and make it so they can still be profitable.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think we're at a really cool place, a supply chain at Schoeller to help bring those two parties together, the end users and the growers. So just always looking forward to solving most of those problems and coming up with the unique solutions. Yep. And that's why we love talking to you guys every year about your projects. Cause it's, it's so nice to see companies being so open and active in this space.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much for talking to me. Of course. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me and opportunity to talk about all our different work over the last year. Yeah, of course. And hopefully we can have you on again next year and we can talk about what 2025 headed store. Awesome. Yep. Looking forward to it. All right. Thank you so much for talking to me and everyone out there. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you. Until next time, stay safe.
