A message from our Managing Director & CEO
‘Nufarm is well-placed to deliver the agricultural innovation essential to enabling our industry to meet some of the world’s most complex challenges.’
Accelerating plant science innovation is essential to our future
Each year, the world reaches new milestones that only reinforce how critical plant science and innovation are to human and environmental health. Our challenges are increasing across several areas. The global population continues to rise, with India overtaking China to become the world’s most populated country, now home to more than 1.4 billion. Climate change is accelerating, leading to more frequent and intense extreme events and the decarbonisation of our economies is disrupting all industries including agriculture, presenting both challenges and opportunities. Nufarm’s innovation and solutions lie at the intersection of these megatrends.
Against this backdrop, incremental change is clearly insufficient and bold, step-change solutions are required. We are driven by a belief that a blend of scientific breakthroughs, product innovation, novel business models and value chain collaborations can deliver new solutions and markets to help solve the world’s sustainability challenges.
Since 1960, food production has quadrupled with negligible increase in agricultural land use. Without the innovations of the plant science industry, more land would be required to produce the same amount of food. Plant science technologies have helped increase agricultural productivity while reducing land use. These productivity enhancements will continue as we harness new technologies and techniques such as gene editing, DNA encoded libraries, and advanced plant breeding to develop crops customised to local conditions.
Collaborating with world-class partners is at the heart of our approach. We are partnering with partners such as the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the University of Adelaide, Olds College of Agriculture & Technology in Alberta, Canada and US-based novel products discovery company, Enko, to commercialise innovative new technologies.
Nufarm is developing innovative plant-based solutions and crop protection products that help address our changing nutrition and energy needs. We made progress with our new crop protection products that help farmers combat the emerging challenges of increasing pesticide resistance as well as products that will help them to produce more from existing farmland.
A United Nations’ report revealed that climate change will further drive the expansion of invasive species, which have played a key role in 60 per cent of recorded plant and animal extinctions costing an estimated US$423 billion every year. As these invasive species grow, the need for crop protection and seed innovation becomes even more critical to protect crops and reduce crop and food loss.
In FY23, our nutritional and bioenergy portfolios reached important milestones. In June 2023, the Norwegian Food Safety Authority approved Aquaterra® Omega-3 oil for use in fish feed applications, opening the world’s largest salmon market to our proprietary omega-3 oil. We also advanced our bioenergy platform with the first carinata crop harvested and processed into low carbon oil under our 10-year agreement with bp. We plan to expand carinata production in other countries to increase the supply of sustainable lower carbon oil feedstocks to meet growing global demand for renewable fuels.
Nufarm is committed to keeping all of our employees safe and well and we continue to evolve our wellbeing programs, safety training, audit and governance in this area.
We continue to make progress on our gender commitments, with the number of women in our senior leadership team increasing by four percentage points to 35 per cent. We have focused on improving the leadership team gender balance to demonstrate our commitment and expectation to the entire organisation.
Nufarm is improving the sustainability of its own operations. In FY23 our scope 1 and 2 emissions from our manufacturing sites, our hazardous waste, and our volatile emissions to air were all lower against our FY20 baseline.
The progress we have made this year only reinforces our commitment to delivering tangible sustainability outcomes. FY24 will be an important year for us to reassess our material topics, refresh our strategy and set further targets that will focus our sustainability performance.
As we navigate the megatrends outlined above, Nufarm is confident that our current and future solutions will help farmers, customers and partners deliver the sustainable economic, social and environmental progress we need now more than ever.
Greg Hunt
Managing Director & CEO
Read our FY23 Sustainability Report here.