SWOF Partner Spotlight: Five Questions with Bartlett’s Vaughn Duitsman
In each Tune Up Newsletter, we profile one team member, partner, or other SWOF affiliate to better understand their contribution to the program. In this edition, we’re spotlighting Vaughn Duitsman, Director of Sustainability at Bartlett.
Vaughn Duitsman
Tell us a little bit about yourself and Bartlett.
Bartlett focuses on the acquisition, storage, transportation, processing, and merchandising of grain. We have many grain facilities in the Midwest, and milling facilities in Kansas and North Carolina. Bartlett is a major U.S. exporter to Mexico of grain.
I started with Bartlett eleven years ago, straight out of college. I was raised on a family farm and studied agricultural economics in college. Several years ago, I was the first person on Bartlett’s sustainability team. It’s been great to see the growth since we started the sustainability team in 2016.
Tell us a bit more about Bartlett’s sustainability efforts.
Bartlett has a unique opportunity within the supply chain to drive sustainable solutions because we directly interact with farmers and CPGs [consumer packaged goods companies]. We’ve made a commitment to foster sustainable solutions and work with several programs to drive the adoption of farming conservation practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the supply chain and improve soil conservation.
Bartlett has a new soybean crush plant opening later this year in southeast Kansas. We’re eager to see the opportunities this will unlock for us in the sustainability space. Agricultural sustainability programs like SWOF provide us with the necessary data and reporting on the commodities we source to meet the needs of the evolving sustainability landscape.
Why did Bartlett choose to partner with SWOF? How are we helping achieve those sustainability goals?
A few years ago, one of our customers had just finished a successful pilot with SWOF and they had very good things to say. Adam [SWOF co-managing director] and I connected at a sustainability conference in Arizona. First, we performed a simulation to test the capabilities and to learn more about the SWOF platform. Everyone was very pleased, and we launched our program to enroll farmers with SWOF not long after that. Plus, in the area of corn and soybean sustainability, SWOF is one of the best programs out there.
We love that SWOF is an inset program that is outcome-based. SWOF has a rigorous MRV (monitoring, recording, and verification) protocol. Bartlett is able to reduce our Scope 3 emissions by working with your team to track environmental outcomes on the farm level.
You have been working with the SWOF team for over a year now. What has that been like?
It has honestly exceeded our expectation. It’s just simple and direct. Working directly with Adam, Dan, and Joe is great. Your team gets it, and you do things on time. Anyone on my staff can reach you if they have a question. We also just like the way SWOF is structured. The outcome-based model properly incentivizes the farmer to scale their efforts. Farmers need to gain value to stick with these practices.
Finally, we had heard good things about SWOF’s reach in the food and beverage industry with other CPGs. Bringing together various aspects of the value chain like that, that’s pretty valuable for Bartlett. The demand for sustainable ingredients is growing and working with SWOF is helping us meet that.
What are you looking forward to from your work in 2024?
With SWOF specifically, the farmer interest has just been fantastic. There is too much interest sometimes and occasionally we have to tell people to wait until next year. And that’s just very exciting to talk about with other CPG customers. We are very excited about our future with SWOF and are eager to see what other supply chain partners get involved and how we can work together.