Nutrien announced the launch of the agricultural industry’s most comprehensive carbon programme, providing end-to-end support for growers to drive improved sustainability and boost profitability. As the world’s largest provider of crop inputs and services to growers, Nutrien is uniquely positioned to create the only programme at scale. It is ready to partner directly with growers to plan, plant and track sustainable farming practices and improve carbon performance.
As part of the new programme, Nutrien will provide sustainable products and solutions, year-round dedicated agronomic counsel and the industry’s leading digital platform to track and measure results. Additionally, Nutrien will enable growers to monetise their improved carbon performance at the farm level by facilitating the purchase and sale of carbon credits from its grower customers to value-chain partners.
Working with select growers, Nutrien will design programmes that facilitate climate smart products and sustainable practices to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, sequester carbon, and measure the resulting improvements in financial, production and environmental performance. Nutrien will pilot the new carbon programme across North America in 2021 and it plans to further scale the programme to South America and Australia in the years ahead.
Chuck Magro, President and CEO, Nutrien, said, “Nutrien is working to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges: producing more food with less land, water and environmental impact. Our new carbon programme will empower growers to produce, preserve and profit from sustainable practices. With our global reach, direct relationships with over 500,000 growers, the sciencebased expertise of our in-house agronomy team, and investments in industry-leading technology, Nutrien is uniquely positioned to create a carbon programme with the scale and resources to bring meaningful and sustainable benefits to growers and the planet they are working hard to feed.”
“Over time, our vision is to expand the carbon programme to include partnerships across the value chain and into other industries that have interest in the carbon economy. Addressing climate change is critically important and we believe the best way to move forward is to work together; we are open to the full range of partnership opportunities. Our aim is to create an ecosystem to help our grower customers benefit from sustainable practices and enable the purchase and sale of their carbon credits, while partnering with governments to help meet public environmental goals.”
“With this new programme, we are helping to build an economy and market around sustainability that we believe is truly the next major transformation for the agriculture industry and addresses global issues that affect everyone,” added Magro.
Demand for carbon credits in the voluntary market has more than doubled since 2017, according to Ecosystem Marketplace’s State of Voluntary Carbon Markets report. Looking ahead, the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets notes that the global market for carbon offsets is expected to increase by 40 - 100X by 2050 as the world increasingly focuses on climate action. Agriculture is expected to be a leading participant in this growing market.
“Carbon has the potential to become a substantial economy that will go a long way towards realising net zero agriculture. Our programme is an important first step towards this journey. Our direct relationship with our grower customers will help them to be early movers in this space and see financial value from farming sustainably,” added Magro.
