Fertilizer cooperation – a key factor in the transition
Updated: 2 maj 2024, 11:37Published: 16 april 2024, 09:13
Lantmännen and Yara collaborate for more sustainable cultivation.
Food production accounts for a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Through fertilizer produced with fossil-free energy sources, you can take big steps on the road to climate-neutral food production. A collaboration between Yara and Lantmännen now enables more sustainable cultivation.
Mineral fertilizer, also called artificial fertilizer or commercial fertilizer, is one of the world’s most important innovations and is estimated to contribute to approximately half of all food produced in the world. There are many different types of mineral fertilizers with different contents depending on the growing conditions and which crops it is to be used for.
Production with a lower climate footprint
Yara has a large research department that tests and develops fertilizer products. Becoming climate neutral is a challenge when the product itself is manufactured from fossil natural gas, but Yara has come a long way. – Compared to producers outside Europe, our products already today have a 50-60 percent lower climate footprint*, says Tina Vinnerborg, VP Commercial Sweden.
But of course that is not enough. To achieve this goal, they work to improve today’s technologies and develop tomorrow’s. One track is to minimize emissions of greenhouse gases during manufacturing. Yara has now developed a production process where instead of natural gas, water is used as a raw material and where production takes place with the help of renewable electricity. This produces a fertilizer that reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 80 to 90 percent*. The product is put on the market together with Lantmännen and during the year full-scale production is reached in the factory.
Commercial cooperation enables the transition
Yara’s fertilizer with a significantly lower climate footprint is included as a criterion in Climate & Nature – Lantmännen’s cultivation program for the future of agriculture ahead of harvest 2024. The program enables farmers to use more sustainable cultivation methods on the farm. – With the fertilizer in place, together with fossil-free fuels and transport, Lantmännen will be able to establish a fossil-free food chain – from farm to table, says Claes Johansson, Sustainability Manager at Lantmännen. The collaboration is crucial to being able to reorganize large-scale food production.
Reduced climate footprint from mineral fertilizers
• Yara is a leading supplier of nitrogen-based mineral fertilizers and industrial products. The company is a world leader in ammonia, nitrates and special fertilizers.
• By 2024, Yara will be able to supply the Swedish market with nitrate-based fossil-free fertilizers that further reduce the carbon footprint by 80-90 percent thanks to the use of renewable energy.
• The independent certification body, DNV, verifies the climate impact of Yara’s products according to the PCF (Product Carbon Footprint) method, one of the most established methods for determining a product’s climate footprint.
Lantmännen’s program Climate & Nature
• Lantmännen is an agricultural cooperative and Northern Europe’s leading player in agriculture, machinery, bioenergy and food. Lantmännen is owned by 18,000 Swedish farmers with operations in the entire value chain from farm to table.
• Climate & Nature is Lantmännen’s cultivation program for the agriculture of the future with concrete measures to reduce the climate impact from cultivation and benefit biodiversity.
• With Klimat & Natur, Lantmännen has reduced the climate footprint from wheat cultivation by up to 45% compared to Swedish conventional cultivation in 2015, when the program started. The program is dynamic and criteria for more sustainable farming methods are added continuously.
Read more about Sustainable farming | Yara Sweden
Read more about Lantmännen’s cultivation program Climate & Nature
* The carbon footprint of fertilizer production. The data is validated by DNV GL.
The article is produced by Brand Studio in collaboration with Yara & Lantmännen and not an article by Dagens industri