Feeding the World & Caring for the Environment
Vision & Green Horizon
Farming not only feeds the world, but it also helps to care for the environment by providing food and habitat for wildlife.
But it’s an industry that can have both positive and negative impacts on the environment, and we are therefore rightly under the spotlight.
We take this responsibility very seriously, and our agronomists work in the farms to grow profitable crops in a safe and environmentally sensitive way.
Our Values
We work to integrate our values in everything that we do within our company and with the farming businesses we work with.
Supporting the future of farming through our commitment to Research & Development.
We are committed to finding solutions to agronomic problems.
We believe that our breadth and depth of research is what sets us apart – whether we’re trialing new seed varieties, researching integrated pest management, or developing new bio-stimulants.
The 'One Health' Concept
Shows the relationship between ecosystems – soils, plants, animals and human health as being closely intertwined.
Save Soil
Soil Resilience
Healthy soils are the basis of all resilient farming systems, yet we’ve not always looked after our soils how we should, and now soil erosion and degradation are major problems for agriculture.
Soil is a finite resource, but healthy soils build farm’s ability to cope with more frequent and extreme weather events, as well as produce healthy, nutritious crops, and improve fertility and yields.
The Importance of Healthy Soils
Soil is fundamental for crop production, supporting delivery of nutrition food, and storing around 80 years’ worth of GHG emissions in the form of carbon.
Soil health can be defined as the continued capacity of a soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals and humans. Healthy soils grow healthy crops that are better able to withstand disease and compete against grass weeds.
Soil Resilience Strategy
Changes to any existing system need to be based on sound evidence and measurements. Our soil resilience strategy (SRS) is the starting point to implementing change. Combining physical, chemical and biological soil assessments with scientific interpretation, the SRS identifies underlying issues, potential opportunities for change, and develops strategies that help our farm improve the health and fertility of their soil.
This allows our farms to select from a combination of options, depending on our needs and business objectives. By fostering the growing interest in soil health and sustainable management, the SRS prevent further degradation and help regenerate soil ecosystems.
Cover crops
Cover crops are recognised as a mechanism to improving and regenerate soil health, where used correctly, can deliver the multiple benefits, such as:
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Capture and recycle nutrients left over from the previous crop, rather than being leached away.
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Protect the soil from erosion by water and wind, by holding soil in place with root and foliage growth.
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Carbon sequestration: cover crops can have a positive long-term effect on reducing greenhouse gases through the interaction between a diverse living cover and the soil biota, which are capable of storing the carbon element within the soil structure.
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In the longer term, cover crops used as an integral part of the farming strategy will improve farm incomes and sustainability by increasing soil fertility and productivity whilst reducing input costs.
Our cover crop mixes are developed based on a rigorous R&D process, understanding what species are best suited to different systems.
For a better tomorrow
Reduce Greenhouse gas emissions
Climate has direct and indirect impacts on agricultural productivity. The effects of extreme weather events over more recent years. With these challenges, new opportunities and innovations are evolving to help us reach the target of Net Zero by 2050.
Our response to climate change is twofold:
1. Adaptation
Our farms need to build on farm resilience to cope with the extremes in weather. This can be achieved through improved soil health, genetics and targeting of inputs. Our role is to help our farm achieve this and maximise farm resilience.
2. Mitigation
The food sector needs to prevent further contributions to climate change. This can be achieved by reducing the carbon footprint of the products we use and adopting more innovative solutions to improve efficiency. Agriculture also has a unique opportunity to sequester carbon from the atmosphere through good soil management, therefore creating a ‘closed loop’ system to GHG emissions.
Agriculture contributes to certain percentage of GHG emissions, yet when breaking it down by gas type, food production is the largest emitter of Nitrous Oxide.
The main source of Nitrous Oxide emissions in agriculture are generated from the application of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, making up approximately 65% of an arable system’s emissions.
Our Enhanced Efficiency Fertiliser (EEF) range helps reduce emissions from food production, with a lower manufacturing carbon footprint, and reduced in field emissions.
Our trials have demonstrated the financial and environmental benefit of substituting traditional mineral fertilisers, such as Ammonium nitrate, with products such as Enhanced Urea, which reduces both ammonia and nitrous oxide emissions.
Our R&D team continue to work closely with fertiliser manufacturers to explore new low impact technologies for manufacturing fertilisers.
The emergence of green ammonia has the potential to reduce the GHG emissions from the manufacturing process. By using renewable energy sources, nitrogen from the atmosphere is combined with hydrogen from water electrolysis to form green ammonia, which can then be used in the production of carbon neutral fertiliser products.
Improving water quality
The protection and replenishment of our water resources is important for crop development and habitat provision. Climate change continues to intensify the water cycle, resulting in more extreme flooding and droughts, creating challenges for crop production. With water scarcity likely to become scarcer in the future, we need to improve the efficiency of how we utilise, conserve, and manage water.