General Mills deal would create large organic crop farm

MINNEAPOLIS — General Mills announced a deal Tuesday to create South Dakota’s largest organic crop farm as the company works to secure enough organic ingredients to meet growing consumer demand worldwide.

Gunsmoke Farms will convert 34,000 acres — more than 53 square miles — near Pierre to organic by 2020, where it will grow organic wheat for General Mills’ popular Annie’s Macaroni & Cheese line.

General Mills, which is guaranteeing a market for the wheat, is working with Madison, Wisconsin-based Midwestern BioAg to develop the crop rotation and soil-building program needed for such a large farm to go organic.

“We’re kind of obsessed with soil,” Carla Vernon, president of General Mills’ Annie’s unit in Berkeley, Calif., said ahead of the announcement. “And that’s because we know the power of soil is big.”

Golden Valley, Minn.-based General Mills, like many other food companies, has ambitious environmental goals, and like other big industry players it has bought smaller brands and tweaked its own products to appeal to consumers who want more organic and natural products. It wants to double its organic acreage by 2020 and to cut greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent by 2025 throughout its supply chain all the way down to consumers, because it believes climate change will be bad for business. The company’s chief sustainability officer, Jerry Lynch, said it’s on pace to meet its organic acreage goal well ahead of schedule.

Gunsmoke Farms will also carve out around 3,000 acres of pollinator habitat in cooperation with the Portland-based Xerces Society. General Mills and Xerces announced a partnership in 2016.