Land O'Lakes Director Featured in Twin Cities Business Magazine
2/12/2010 12:00 AM

Greg Somerville, Land O'Lakes former director of Sustainability, is featured in the February issue of Twin Cities Business magazine, in an article titled “Environmental Individuals.”  The article explains the trend toward environmental leadership roles in organizations and features examples of these roles at Twin Cities businesses.

In the article, Somerville describes his role at Land O'Lakes and highlights the company’s biggest sustainable opportunity as: “Getting business units to think about environmental impact.  Our farmer-owners have always been engaged in sustainable behaviors, because the land is their biggest asset, but we’ve brought more sustainability focus to our production operations and our headquarters,” he said.

Somerville also explains how various mid-level executives at Land O'Lakes will spend a year in the director of Sustainability role in order to use their sustainability experience to make informed decisions as they progress in their careers. He recently rotated out of the position and resumed his role as director of Field Sales for Land O'Lakes Dairy Foods Value Added - Retail Deli.  Tim Makens has replaced him as director of Sustainability.  Makens comes from Land O'Lakes Purina Feed.

“Our consumers are expecting to be able to buy sustainable products that have reduced packaging and reduced energy associated with production,” said Somerville.  “So there is economic value to sustainability.  It’s really a key element of our overall corporate social responsibility.”

Other environmental leadership roles in the Twin Cities featured positions from Supervalu, Tennant Company, McGough Companies, Best Buy and Macalester College.

View a PDF version of the print article here.