Yara International ASA, Oslo, and Northern European ag cooperative Lantmännen, Stockholm, have signed an agreement to bring fossil-free fertilizers to market. The product will be produced by Yara and marketed by Lantmannen in Sweden starting in 2023. The two partners began testing the commercial viability of green fertilizers in 2019.
Instead of using fossil fuels such as natural gas to produce ammonia, the green fertilizers will be produced with ammonia based on renewable energy produced in Europe, such as Norwegian hydropower. The result will be fertilizers with an 80-90 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.
“Our partnership with Lantmännen to bring green fertilizers to market is crucial for decarbonizing the food value chain,” said Yara President and CEO Svein Tore Holsether. “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.”
“Lantmännen drives the development towards farming of the future,” said Per Olof Nyman, Group President & CEO at Lantmännen. “With the green fertilizers 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.”
The cooperative said by combining the fertilizer with fossil free fuels, transport, and precision farming, it will be able to establish a fossil free value chain from field to fork. It said it has reduced the climate footprint from wheat cultivation by up to 30 percent since 2015. With green fertilizers included in the program, the climate impact will be reduced even further by 20 percentage points.
Yara said its nitrate-based mineral fertilizers produced in the European Union and Norway already have a carbon footprint that is about 50-60 percent lower compared with most non-E.U. fertilizers. It said this is thanks to the use of a best available technology (BAT) catalytic process that reduces greenhouse gas emissions during production, which was first developed by Yara and later shared with other producers.