Director of the AgroTerra Technology Development Center speaks about how the company reduces greenhouse gas emissions
Valery Redkin, Director of the AgroTerra Technology Development Center, spoke on February 11th at the 13th International Conference: Where is the margin? This conference is one of the main industry events gathering the leading agricultural producers and suppliers of inputs and services. Valery participated in the conference and talked about the experience of AgroTerra in greenhouse gas emissions sequestration.
According to Valery Redkin, the importance of ecological sustainability has grown significantly due to the fact that CO₂ emissions increased by 10 times over the last century.
"The tenfold increase in emissions does not mean anything good for sustainable development or food production safety. Therefore, ESG and Sustainable farming is the future of the industry. It is also a trend for consumers, investors and the government. A greenhouse gas decrease will make light of the essential importance to the whole supply chain, and AgroTerra is getting ready for it. "
He also announced that AgroTerra started to conduct field trials together with its partners in 2021. Field trials are performed at the experimental fields of AgroTerra Technology Development Center with the aim to sequester greenhouse gas emissions.
"We conduct experiments in 5 regions. In fact, it is the entire geography of the company. The total area of experiments is not that large; it amounts to 780 ha. We have a goal to reach that is in alignment with the global agenda. Our goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2025 while enhancing the economic sustainability of the company. "
In this connection, measuring the decrease in greenhouse gas emissions should be focused on the economic sustainability of the company, according to Valery.
"An absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per ton of products is often confused with the decrease per hectare. The point is that the decrease per hectare might endanger the economic sustainability of farming since the technologies aimed at greenhouse gas emissions reduction affect the crop yield. We are not ready to sacrifice our crop yield and economic sustainability. Therefore, we face a serious challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions per ton. "
The Director of the AgroTerra Technology Development Center also noted that it was necessary to test the technologies before implementation on the industrial scale.
“The introduction of cover crops is one of the technologies we are testing. The point of it is that the cover crops’ roots, instead of plow steel, form the soil structure. It remains necessary to select the proper mix of crops and test them under different conditions. That is why we launched this project in 5 regions based on the recommendations given by our consultants from Europe. According to our consultants, the companies in Eastern Europe started to apply “no-till” technologies without any significant drop in the yield. But when we compared our soil with the soil in Poland, for example, it turned out that the concentration of clay in our soil is 2.5 times higher. Therefore, “no-till” technologies successfully applied to one type of soil might become a disaster on another. We understand this and are testing various technological solutions that will allow us to achieve both environmental and economic goals. »
AgroTerra will get the first results of the field trials aimed at the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the fall of 2022. Based on the data, the company will make a decision on scaling technologies to the industrial level.