BY ANTONY CURRIE

Tyson Foods has decided to save much-needed water-use reforms from the slaughterhouse. On Tuesday, America’s largest meat producer said it has committed to improve water, soil and fertilizer practices on 2 million acres of its suppliers’ land by 2020. The announcement comes less than two months after the company’s founding family used its supervoting stock to nix a shareholder resolution along the same lines.

At February’s annual meeting, 63 percent of the company’s independent shareholders voted in favor of the resolution, which called on executives to implement a water-stewardship program to better deal with animal effluent and chemicals produced by both Tyson’s own processing plants and the 11,000 farmers in its supply chain. But the 10 votes allotted to each Class B share allowed the family to reduce the overall support for the resolution to just 16 percent.

Tyson, which produces one-fifth of the nation’s pork, chicken and beef and tips the scales at a $26 billion market capitalization, has faced and beaten a similar shareholder effort in each of the past several years. Right after the most recent vote, though, the company sat down with investors to hear their concerns.

The result is the largest-ever commitment to sustainable grain – in this case, corn – production by a U.S. meat company. It doesn’t address everything shareholders were pushing for. As yet, for example, there’s no corresponding improvement plan for Tyson’s own plants or the farmers who rear the animals it buys.

Nor does the new policy deal with most of the water-management criticisms leveled at the company by not-for-profit investor lobby group Ceres. Tyson’s lack of an assessment of future water conditions and inadequate board and executive oversight of water use, among a raft of other shortcomings, earned it a score of just 11 out of 100 in Ceres’ recent “Feeding Ourselves Thirsty” report.

Tyson may have more to do. But at least the governance-challenged company is no longer chickening out of listening to its shareholders – and taking action.

First published April 4, 2018

IMAGE: REUTERS/Mike Blake