General Mills CEO Harmening: ‘We don’t sell Cheerios in the morning and then think about sustainability in the afternoon’

• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening.
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Good morning. When General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening thinks about sustainability, he looks at the millions of acres of farmland where his company sources wheat, oat, dairy, and other crops. “If we don’t do something different, in about 2050, 90% of topsoil will be in danger,” Harmening told me at a dinner that Fortune held in partnership with Deloitte for sustainability leaders in Minneapolis. The good news is that General Mills is more than 60% of the way to achieving its goal of advancing regenerative agriculture—farming practices that regenerate degraded soil—on a million acres of land by 2030. “We’re, frankly, ahead of where we thought we’d be.”

That’s cause for hope in otherwise challenging times for leaders who care about sustainability. At a global level, we’re on track to achieve only 17% of the UN’s sustainable development goals by 2030. Nationally, we’ve seen a rollback with the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, dismantling of key agencies, and the EPA decision to repeal limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

But the private sector is stepping up, with many of the leaders at our dinner giving examples of how sustainability initiatives not only protect but grow their businesses. As one attendee said: “Regulations move the laggards, not the leaders.” (The table conversation was under Chatham House rules.)

For Harmening, the key is focus: He reduced the number of company-wide initiatives from 70 to 10 when he became CEO, doubling down on three that are core to the business: regenerative agriculture, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and recycling. “This is part of our strategy for how we win,” he said. “We don’t sell Cheerios in the morning and then think about sustainability in the afternoon.”

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Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com