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

(Credit: General Mills)

• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening.
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• Analyst notes from UBS on the conflict in the Middle East, Goldman Sachs on the Fed, Convera on international interest rates, and JPMorgan on the effect of tariffs.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

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 with sponsor 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.”