Yara and Lantmännen are the first companies to sign a commercial agreement to bring fossil free fertilisers to market. Produced with renewable energy, these green fertilizers are crucial for decarbonizing the food chain and offering consumers more sustainable food choices.
Yara, a leading global fertiliser producer, and Lantmännen, northern Europe’s leading agricultural cooperative with operations from field to fork, began testing the commercial viability of green fertilizers in 2019 with a common goal to realise the world’s first fossil free food chain. The collaboration has resulted in a commercial contract for green fertilizers, which will be produced by Yara and marketed by Lantmännen in Sweden starting in 2023.
Instead of using fossil fuels such as natural gas to produce ammonia – the building block of mineral fertilizers – the green fertilisers will be produced with ammonia based on renewable energy produced in Europe, such as Norwegian hydropower. The result will be fertilizers with an 80 to 90 percent lower carbon footprint. Yara has a portfolio of green ammonia projects, which will be key to producing green fertilizers, in Norway, the Netherlands and Australia, and is working actively to expand its clean ammonia business.
Collaboration is key
“Our partnership with Lantmännen to bring green fertilisers to market is crucial for decarbonizing the food value chain. We have to transform the food system to deliver on the Paris Agreement, and this will require collaboration across the entire food chain instead of working in silos. The Yara-Lantmännen partnership is a concrete example of how this can be done,” says Svein Tore Holsether, President & CEO of Yara.
For Lantmännen, using the green fertilisers will be an important step closer to reaching climate neutral farming.
“Lantmännen drives the development towards farming of the future. With the green fertilisers from Yara in place we enable Swedish farmers to continue to be at the forefront, offering our customers sustainability performance according to global climate targets as well as bringing sustainable food to consumers. With this partnership, we can continue to meet an increased market demand for sustainable products,” says Per Olof Nyman, Group President & CEO at Lantmännen.
The fertilisers will be incorporated into Lantmännen’s cultivation program Climate & Nature. The program makes it profitable for farmers to adopt more sustainable farming practices. Green fertilizers from Yara are an important additional component in the further development of the program. Combining the fertilizers with fossil free fuels, transport and precision farming, Lantmännen will be able to establish a fossil free value chain – from field to fork.
Yara and Lantmännen are also collaborating on other projects to reduce the carbon footprint of farming in the field through crop nutrition solutions, innovative farming practices as well as digital tools, enabling the transition to a decarbonized and more sustainable food value chain.
