FERTILISER producer Yara has announced a new partnership with potato supplier and grower Branston, which will be trialed at the Branston farm in Lincolnshire.
As part of the initiative, Yara will provide Branston with lower carbon fertilisers as well as crop nutrition support to reduce carbon footprint and improve yield. As part of the joint initiative, Yara will supply Branston, the potato grower for Tesco Finest white potatoes, with a Lower Carbon Crop Nutrition Program to reduce the carbon footprint of the end product.
Already a buyer of Yara’s liquid and solid fertiliser products, Branston’s aim to achieve long-term sustainability led to discussions with the fertiliser producer about how it could help the company lower its carbon footprint using lower-carbon fertilisers.
YaraMila, YaraBela and YaraLiva have been lower carbon since 2006 when Yara introduced abatement technology to reduce nitrous oxide emissions. However, this is only part of the picture. Alongside supplying fertiliser products, Yara will provide Branston with potato crop nutrition support focusing on whole plant health to improve yield.
This will involve carrying out soil and leaf testing at its Lancrop Laboratories to assess NUE and identify nutrient deficiencies and providing micronutrient products from the YaraVita range to ensure crops have everything they need.
The project will gather relevant data to demonstrate how much of a carbon reduction is possible. Included in this data will be verification statements which will show the carbon footprint reduction of the products supplied.
Key Account Manager for Yara UK, Gareth Flockhart, said: “Introducing this holistic crop nutrition program approach will positively impact the potato crop at Branston by lowering carbon footprints whilst maintaining or increasing yields. Yara fertilisers have been independently verified since 2006 and now include the new Climate Choice Low Carbon grades. These lower carbon fertilisers included as part of the Crop Nutrition Plan will inevitably help both Branston and Tesco reduce their carbon footprint even further.
“Our hope is that through this initiative, we can demonstrate that by making the switch to lower carbon fertilisers is the way to a more sustainable food system for the future.”
It is hoped the project will then be rolled out to the company’s external growers in the near future.
Branston’s Agronomy Director, Mark Willcox, said: “Yara have done some great work in developing a number of genuinely low-carbon fertiliser products that should offer potato growers the same storability, handleability and nutrient uptake that they are used to from conventional products. We hope that over time, innovative products such as these will be incorporated into our recipe for low carbon (or even Net Zero) potato production.”
