Wal-Mart has joined an alliance of other Fortune 500 companies seeking to make agriculture more sustainable, Reuters reports.

The Field to Market alliance was started 3 years ago by the nonprofit Keystone Center to improve ag productivity and reduce the use of natural resources. It includes farm groups, grain handlers and food makers, but Wal-Mart is the first retailer in the group.

Other members of the alliance include Cargill, Kellogg Co., Bunge Ltd., Coca-Cola and the National Corn Growers Association.

“We have pretty ambitious goals to sell products that are sustainable and this is directly within that framework,” says Rob Kaplan, Wal-Mart’s senior manager of sustainability.

The group studies major crops and works with farmers to make agriculture more environmentally friendly. A report released earlier this summer highlighted how six crops — corn, cotton, potatoes, rice, soybeans and wheat — are now being produced more efficiently than they were in the last 3 decades.

Wal-Mart wants to eliminate 20 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its global supply chain by the end of 2015.

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