It’s time to AdvanceMint: How we’re working to enhance the livelihoods of 20,000 mint farmers
Mint touches our lives every day. The ingredient brings freshness to our favorite minty toothpaste or mouthwash, our morning smoothies giving them a sweet taste, our tea soothing upset stomachs, or our favorite gum and mints bringing smiles to our faces. When I started working at Mars four years ago, I quickly learned that we have thousands of farmers and their families to thank for their care and hard work to help bring us these simple moments.
Last week, Mars Wrigley Confectionery hosted a meeting with government leaders, business and non-profit partners, and mint farmers in India’s state of Uttar Pradesh to launch Shubh Mint — a program built with four years of research, analysis and community engagement with 2,600 farmers, women and children in seven villages. Eight collaborators including us, three suppliers and four non-governmental implementation partners decided that if we work together towards a set of common goals we could deliver greater impact in a shorter amount of time than if we worked separately. So, why mint? We use mint to flavor 65% of our gum and mint products across 15 brands that consumers know and love including Orbit®, Doublemint® and Life Savers®. Recognizing that mint sourced in the U.S., Canada and India is key to our business, we’ve developed Shubh Mint, part of our global AdvanceMint program, to advance mint plant science and support farmers and their communities in these origins.
My colleagues and I have traveled from the mint fields of the U.S. and Canada to farms in India, speaking with farmers about the challenges they face and listening to how mint provides them with a livelihood to support their families. Farmers in the U.S. and Canada voiced their concerns about crop disease, whether the next generation would continue mint farming, and ideas to improve water efficiency and use new technology such as drones and soil sensors to help them grow their crops using less inputs. In India, we heard about their concerns of declining yields and struggling to put food on their own tables. While mint farmers in these regions have different challenges to overcome, their anxieties can be distilled down to this — mint is the key to their families’ livelihoods.
Through the AdvanceMint and Shubh Mint programs, we’ve committed to increasing productivity of the crop, improving smallholder farmer incomes and reducing water consumption by 30% over the next five years. These commitments are a part of a broader ambition developed by Mars to be Sustainable in a Generation. From implementing a Good Agricultural Practice program for 20,000 smallholder farmers in India with Agribusiness Systems International to collaborating with mint farmers and others in the industry to protect the mint plant against crop disease through the Mint Industry Research Council, we’re investing in science that will help us meet our commitments. And with our partners, we are also keeping the farmers’ communities at the heart of our programs. We’ve developed innovative sustainable agriculture awards for our North American farmers which will launch in early 2018 to help them invest in sustainable farming practices. In India, we’ll bring empowerment programs to women and youth in mint-farming communities.
The pride growers shared with us knowing that their mint would be consumed around the world always made me proud to support them through our products. The next time you see a farmer, thank them for all they do. And through AdvanceMint, Mars Wrigley Confectionery will continue to support and stand behind mint growers as we all work together towards a more sustainable and resilient future for mint.
