Whether you are in the beginning stages of building sustainability into your business, are in the midst of transition, or have always operated with sustainability as a core principle, long-term success in your mission requires one fundamental thing: Clear direction.
Set realistic goals based on areas in need of improvement
The first step to creating a clear direction for sustainability is to understand what areas of your business need improvement. This will allow you to set goals and implement management strategies to help hit your targets.
For example, one of the most impactful ways of improving sustainability is to reduce inputs like water, fertilizer, and herbicides – while maintaining current levels of production. If done correctly, this will not only benefit the environment but also improve your profit margin.
How are you going to achieve your goals?
To effectively make improvements and hit goals, a clear plan of action is needed.
When looking at input reduction, selecting plants that will help improve soil structure, are drought, disease, and pest resistant, add organic matter back into the ground, and fix free nitrogen for companion and succeeding crops are effective ways to do this.
But what species and varieties are best for your system and goals? How should they be managed to help hit your targets? How do you capitalize on new opportunities they provide?
Build a sustainable network
When it comes to implementing new practices and improving management, there is a lot to be gained by building a community of forward-thinking people with the same objectives that can help you achieve your goals. From vendors and customers to influencers and industry friends, shared values will help keep your business headed in the right direction.
As part of our mission to help support our business partners, GO Seed has been centered around innovative research. Each year, we test over 4,000 lines of cover crop, forage, and turf species to develop multipurpose tools to fill future needs. Because we’ve set high standards to provide the agricultural industry with quality varieties worthy of commercial production, less than one percent of these lines make it to market. As your sustainability partner, GO Seed is ready to help you navigate into a successful future by continuing to provide you with novel solutions for growing concerns.
Clear Direction is Part 4 of our 5-part blog series. See below for the other blogs.
Part 1: Sustainability Creates Opportunities
Part 2: Asset Protection
Part 3: Clear Vision
Part 4:Clear Direction
Part 5: Time is your enemy – It’s time to GO
For a printable, PDF version of this blog, click below.
Clear Direction. PDF
