Sustainable Agriculture within Farming
Sustainability within Agriculture is fast becoming a common subject within the industry. This is due to several reasons such as consumer demands, regulations, and economic benefits. With the current challenges including supply chain disruptions, climate change and soil degradation, Yara’s ambition is to Grow a Nature Positive Food Future. To put this into perspective, protecting nature by farm practices and products that can give back to the soil than take.
The Yara Nature range of organo-mineral fertiliser combines the best features from mineral fertilisers and organic components to allow more effective use of fertilisers. Unlike classic mineral fertilisers, Yara Nature fertilisers contains up to 60% organic matter. It is an ideal seedbed application for spring cereals, oilseed, or linseed to give them the best start possible.
For the UK and Ireland, Yara’s OBF value proposition for the future:
- Develop products designed to reduce scope 3 emissions, helping food chain partners to realise net zero pledges.
- Deliver organic carbon back to the soil promoting chemical, physical, and biological health preventing soil degradation.
- Bring circularity food production and better nutrient utilisation on farm.
What are Organic Based Fertilisers?
Organic based fertilisers contain organic carbon and nutrients of solely biological origin, with nutrients derived from plant or animals. Animal by-products (such as manure or by-products from the meat and fish processing industries), agricultural residual products (green waste, composted green waste) or recycled bio-waste (compost or digestate from food waste) are the raw materials that are most used. They can be unprocessed (manure, compost, digestate) or processed into high-quality fertiliser, either in solid (pellets, granules) or liquid form.
What are Organo Mineral Fertilisers?
The name Organo Mineral is a combination of organic material and mineral fertiliser. The organic fraction can be a wide range of varied materials, such as food waste. The mineral fraction of Organo Mineral Fertilisers (OMF) can also vary with products such as ammonium sulphate, urea, and CAN.
The organic fraction tends to have an elevated level of organic matter (OM) content, which comes with many benefits to soil health and structure. Repeated applications of an OMF will help to increase OM levels in soils and therefore increase soil fertility overtime.
Listen to the Organo Mineral Fertiliser podcast episode
Ken Rundle talks to Dr Paul O’Hora, Yara’s Senior OMF Project Portfolio Manager, alongside Dr Emma Burak, Yara's Sustainable Fertiliser Manager about Organo-mineral fertiliser (OMF) and the work Yara is doing to help create a Nature Positive Food Future.
What are the benefits of Organo Mineral Fertilisers?
Implementing an Organo Mineral Fertiliser within your Crop Nutrition Strategy:
- Improves microbial activity
- Promotes increased root
- Ensures a healthy and fertile soil
- Increases assimilation capacity of plants
- Reduces nitrate leaching by improving nutrient cycling from harvest residues
Yara’s contribution to crop nutrient practices
With our ambition of growing a nature-positive food future, we are spearheading the transition to sustainable and efficient agri-food systems. Yara contributes to meeting some of the challenges in organic farming with our crop nutrition solutions and precision farming tools such as the N-Tester BT and Atfarm; which are crop and site specific.
Additional Resources
65 years-long research concludes: Mineral fertiliser supports sustainable agriculture
