Protecting biodiversity is an issue of growing scientific and public concern. Scientists and conservation organizations have identified several factors that threaten biodiversity, including habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, human overpopulation, and overharvesting. As a company dependent on the natural world for our raw materials, we are responsible for avoiding and minimizing adverse impacts on biodiversity. We do so by not operating in protected habitats or areas of high biodiversity value. It is our understanding that there are no protected species with habitats in areas where we operate domestically. Furthermore, several of our facilities feature buffers and other natural areas, preserving local natural habitat.
LEARN MORE Restoring Prairie Ecosystems
Environmental Enhancement Grants
For over a decade, we’ve provided financial support to environmental stewardship programs that protect native habitats. In 2000, Smithfield and our hog production subsidiaries in North Carolina voluntarily entered into an agreement with the attorney general of North Carolina. We are making annual contributions of $2 million over a 25-year period that began in 2000 to preserve wetlands and other natural areas in Eastern North Carolina and promote similar environmental enhancement activities.
To maximize the value of Smithfield’s funding, the attorney general established the Environmental Enhancement Grants (EEG) Program in January 2003. The EEG Program funds projects that improve and preserve the natural resources of North Carolina by restoring and protecting impaired, degraded, or endangered natural resources, as well as conserving and protecting targeted natural areas. Grants have helped create easements, expand the state parks system, and preserve river habitat. They have also been used to close small farm livestock lagoons no longer in use.
For example, Ducks Unlimited, the North Carolina Foundation for Soil & Water Conservation, the Sampson Soil & Water Conservation District, and Murphy-Brown developed a mixed-use wildlife impoundment that occupies nearly a quarter (80 of 337 acres) of a Murphy-Brown swine farm in Sampson County, North Carolina. Opened in February 2011, the project uses innovative soil and water conservation practices to provide a winter habitat for migratory waterfowl, shorebirds, and other wildlife, and seasonal plantings to produce crops in the summer. The project will support local wildlife, and improve water quality for the surrounding area, while providing recreational and educational opportunities for visitors. For example, the Wildlife Resources Commission will host duck hunts for developmentally challenged children on the site.
Since 2004, Ducks Unlimited has received seven Environmental Enhancement Grants totaling more than $2.3 million from the EEG program. The organization has used that money to support their Sound CARE initiative, a comprehensive initiative designed to conserve, enhance, restore, and protect critical wetland habitat in North Carolina. In 2010, their restoration efforts benefited the 362-acre Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge in the eastern part of the state.
Between 2002 and 2010, Smithfield awarded more than $17.3 million to 62 conservation projects. To see past winners, please visit the North Carolina Attorney General’s Web site.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the tallgrass prairie ecosystem occupied nearly 240 million acres of the Prairie Peninsula, an area that covers parts of Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. In the 20th century, settlers discovered the value of the prairie soil and converted much of it to agricultural use. Other prairie land was lost due to urbanization. Today, less than 0.1 percent of native prairies remain intact, making it the most endangered ecosystem in North America.
The prairie chicken is an indicator species, a symbol of healthy grassland ecosystems. In 1999, the prairie chicken was added to Missouri’s endangered species list, highlighting the troubling condition of prairie grasslands. The Missouri Greater Prairie Chicken Recovery Plan aims to take the fowl off the endangered species list, through grassland recovery efforts.
Premium Standard Farms (PSF) donated a lease of more than 600 acres of company-owned pasture and cropland to the Missouri Prairie Foundation in an effort to bring back native vegetation and, along with it, wildlife that once flourished here. The effort is one of the largest wildlife habitat improvement programs in state history. Since 2006, nearly 300 acres of native prairie have been restored. The project has included a combination of fire management, grazing, and crop cultivation to bring back native wildflowers and grasses where any number of species, including the prairie chicken, can thrive.
