2030 commitment

Launch and scale a comprehensive Carbon Program, empowering growers and our industry to accelerate climate-smart agriculture and soil carbon sequestration while rewarding growers for their efforts, by 2030.

Our Carbon Program is also referred to as a Sustainable Agriproducts Program. Sustainable agriproduct acres involve agronomic solutions leading to measurable outcomes such as carbon, soil or water, with the ability to validate and verify those outcomes. These acres are included in our 75 million acres target.

  • We define “sustainably engaged acres” as acres that participate in programs that track field-level data that is, or can be, analyzed for sustainability metrics and/ or acres that participate in sustainable agriproducts programs that incentivize growers to adopt additional sustainable products and practices resulting in quantifiable, incremental benefits that may be verified and used for reporting purposes.

Our 2023 highlights

We enabled emissions reductions on approximately 900,000 sustainably engaged acres in North America, working with growers and collaborating with 15 suppliers and downstream partners. We established a validated pathway and verified GHG insets in Canada and verified GHG outcomes and insets in the US, based on grower data. 


Update: This goal directly contributes to our 75 million acres target as our Carbon Program has evolved to be considered within a suite of comprehensive sustainable agriculture programs. Going forward we will no longer view this goal independently and progress will be reported under our 75 million acres target (“75 million acres”). We will continue to report on our Carbon Program and how it and other ecosystem services and their outcomes collectively contribute to our 75 million acres. We will continue our efforts to seek to empower growers and our industry to accelerate sustainable agriculture and soil carbon sequestration, while rewarding growers for their efforts.

Carbon program at a glance

Our Carbon Program aims to empower growers and our industry to accelerate sustainable agriculture and soil carbon sequestration while rewarding growers for their efforts. Together with our value-chain partners, Nutrien incentivizes practices and offers products and services that support the creation of carbon offsets or insets. Nutrien uses our digital platforms, such as Agrible®, to measure and track the results that growers share. 

In 2023, we successfully demonstrated proof of concept for verified and tradeable carbon outcomes. 

Our combined US and Canada insets and offsets resulted in approximately 1,500 tonnes CO2e of emissions reductions and removals from improved agricultural practices. The groundwork accomplished a new validated pathway in Canada and verified GHG outcomes, which positions us to continue to support increasing grower accessibility and potential scale moving forward. 

2023 Highlights
 

Verified GHG offsets in the US

  • Working with growers since 2021, Nutrien verified GHG offsets based on improved nitrogen management by growers in the US. Following the Climate Action Reserve’s US Nitrogen Management Protocol Version 2.1, growers’ emission reductions from the 2021 harvest were third-party verified for sale. Credits were issued into the voluntary offset market in August of 2023 and purchased by Royal Bank of Canada in November.
  • This first sale of emission reduction offsets from in-field practices is a potential path for a scalable offset program that is accessible to farmers across the US.

 

Verified GHG insets in the US

  • Nutrien is a Founding Circle member of the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (“ ESMC”). Nutrien sponsored ESMC’s Eco-Harvest Pilot Program, and acted as enrollment specialist and crop advisor to collect data and support the verification of removals and reductions from growers. Reductions were the result of changing nutrient management, reducing tillage or establishing new cover crops in the midwestern US.
  • This pilot program began in 2021 and the results now provide a roadmap to scale future agricultural carbon projects. 

 

Validated pathway and verified GHG outcomes in Canada

  • We are the first company in Canada to achieve validated pathway and verified GHG outcomes with SustainCERT, a globally recognized climate impact verifier.
  • Our Canadian Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes program is modeled on Albertaʼs Nitrous Oxide Emissions Reduction Protocol (“NERP”), which uses field-level data to measure, track and validate CO2e reductions from nitrogen fertilizer application.
  • In 2023, SustainCERT verified the GHG emission reductions from this value-chain intervention that involved a collaboration of farmers, Nutrien, Maple Leaf Foods and others. The reduction will enable Maple Leaf Foods to inset a reduction against their Scope 3 emissions. Projects like these can help reduce Nutrien’s Scope 3 emissions in the future.

 

Voluntary carbon markets explained: 

In a voluntary carbon market, trading is on a voluntary basis but still structured with verified credits. As crops grow, carbon is sequestered into soil and with improved management of nitrogen inputs there is an opportunity for growers to also measure, track and verify GHG emission reductions. Both carbon sequestered in the soil and GHG emission reductions qualify as carbon credits.

  • Carbon offsetting is a way for entities to reduce their carbon footprint by paying another entity to reduce their emissions. Carbon insetting (also referred to as "GHG outcomes") refers to the actions taken by an organization to reduce emissions within its own supply chain.

Read our report to learn more about sustainable agriculture programs driving carbon markets 

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Farm Families

Growers can sign up for our Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes program in Canada here and the US here

Early Adopters

Parrott Family Farms has a lot of history. With seven generations of growers and roots dating back to 1842, the farm sits just outside Danville, Iowa. If agriculture has entered a new race for sustainability, Parrott Family Farms is running it hard – and Nutrien is helping them on. Read more here 
 

 

Carbon program partners

How it works

By leveraging our direct relationship with over 500,000 growers globally, and our industry and execution partners, we will provide year-round agronomic solutions that enable growers to profit from the adoption of sustainable practices. 

Agriculture has the potential to be a leading source of carbon assets. By supporting growers to adopt best practices, leverage digital technology (which can measure and analyze impact) and use crop inputs that support sustainability, we can drive emission improvements throughout the entire agricultural value chain. Supporting the development of a carbon credit market to pay growers for every tonne of reduced emissions and sequestered carbon is key to achieving our overall objectives. 

Continue to scale

Nutrien will look to continue expanding the Carbon Program with a focus on nitrogen management practice improvements and resultant emissions outcomes, continuing to incubate scalable options for soil carbon sequestration, and establishing pilots in North America, South America and Australia. 

 

Join us in feeding the world

No one company, no single government and no standalone framework of regulations can effectively tackle the climate action we need alone. Only by working together can we make the meaningful changes needed to preserve our planet for future generations. Will you join us?

 

Are you a grower, interested in participating?

Contact us at the link below to find out how you can get involved.

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Not a grower, but interested in learning more?

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Dive into our performance

Sustainability Targets

Sustainability Report

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