Sustainable Agriculture
Agriculture contributes approximately 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions and bears the impacts of climate change, threatening food security, especially for the most vulnerable populations.
Climate change’s negative impacts on global food systems include increasing temperatures, weather irregularity, shifting agroecosystem borders, invasive pests and crops, and more frequent extreme weather events, resulting in reduced crop yields, the lower nutritional quality of major grains, and lower livestock productivity.
OCI Global is committed to supporting global food security
Through various programs, we work with our customers around the world to maximize yields, strengthen crops, prevent soil degradation, promote sustainable agricultural practices, and accelerate growth to meet the world’s rising food demands. We also work to ensure our products are used in a way that safeguards health, occupational and public safety and security, biodiversity, and the environment.
Our approach
Reducing the embedded carbon footprint of nitrogen fertilizers through renewable feedstocks and carbon capture and storage
Developing products that will enhance nutrient use efficiency to reduce losses and increase yields
Collaborating across the value chain to promote sustainable intensification
What we’re doing
Fertilizer use is essential to maximize yields, minimize soil degradation, and sequester carbon dioxide. Nitrogen fertilizers are the key nutrient for crop growth and development. High-quality soil maximizes farm yields and ensures healthy crops, which in turn naturally sequester carbon dioxide to help fight climate change.
OCI’s fertilizer products help achieve sustainable agriculture by providing an effective and environmentally sound source of nitrogen.
We educate farmers on fertilizer application and storage through our digital farming offerings, which include the Nutrinorm agronomy website www.nutrinorm.nl, and two applications developed specifically for farmers:
- OCI Agro Weather app to optimize farmers’ activity planning.
- OCI Nutrition app for an optimal nutrition application.
Using these resources, our customers can ensure fertilizer quality is maintained through correct storage, blend products correctly, ensure spreading settings are correct to maximize even fertilization, calculate optimal fertilizer release, accurately track the weather, and receive 24/7 access to the support they need.
We have invested in developing innovative products that improve crop yields while having a lower environmental impact.
Our conventional nitrogen fertilizer products provide optimal crop nutrition due to their quality, resulting in lower nitrogen loss and increased crop yields.
We are also developing fertilizers with urease and/or nitrification inhibitors, which are among the most credible pathways to reducing N2O emission during field applications. This is crucial as N2O contributes to over 50% of GHG emissions in the nitrogen fertilizer value chain.
Dynamon, an integrated nitrogen-sulphur fertilizer promoting increased nitrogen efficiency is now available as part of our product portfolio.
Inappropriate fertilization practices can lead to the loss of nutrients to the environment. If those nutrients are not replaced, soil health will decline and eventually lead to soil degradation.
We work with industry associations to educate farmers on fertilizer application and storage, provide digital resources, and to encourage sustainable farming. In Europe and the US, we support the 4R Nutrient Stewardship program through our membership in The Fertilizer Institute (TFI).
Applying lower-carbon Nutramon to produce lower-carbon wheat and flour results in a reduction of about 14% to the life cycle carbon footprint of a baguette. When you compound that impact across multiple food chains and locations, the potential is huge. And applying lower carbon Nutramon as a fertilizer has a very marginal cost on feed and good products. For example, the additional cost to produce a baguette using wheat grown with lower-carbon Nutramon is €0.0028, meaning there is nearly zero additional cost to the consumer.
Calculation by OCI Global of cradle-to-retail incremental cost to the consumer of using lower-carbon Nutramon compared to grey Nutramon, all else equal.
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