Food Security | Sustainability

Fertilizer production is essential to global food supply and food security. However, the improper use of fertilizer creates risks through adverse impacts on climate change and water quality, as well as for our business. By focusing on proper nutrient stewardship on a large scale, we believe that CF Industries can help safeguard demand for our products and protect operating margins, while also being part of the solution to protect water resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Increasing widespread adoption of practices to promote sustainable usage of our products is a longstanding goal for CF Industries. Over time, we have worked with multiple partners on advancing nutrient stewardship practices and believe that it is also essential to improve the industry’s ability to accurately measure farm-level emissions from fertilizer use (which constitute downstream Scope 3 emissions for CF Industries), which can open up additional opportunities to advance practices to reduce those emissions. As part of our journey, CF Industries communicated two initial goals regarding sustainable use of our fertilizer products in 2020:

Reach 90,000 farmers with 4R Plus program by 2023
Expand partnerships to achieve 60 million acres of farmland using sustainable practices by 2030

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CF has continued its strong involvement in several ongoing initiatives related to nutrient stewardship, but also added new partnerships and initiatives in 2021 in an effort to accelerate progress towards our goals is this area.

Ongoing Industry-Wide Action on Nutrient Stewardship: Proper nutrient stewardship is critical to reducing the environmental impacts of fertilizer use, while ensuring strong crop yields and food security and limiting pressures for deforestation. CF has long been involved with our key industry associations, including The Fertilizer Institute and Fertilizer Canada, to boost farm-level adoption of the core 4R nutrient stewardship practices.
Focused 4RPlus Education Program in Iowa: For the past six years, CF Industries has played a leading role in supporting 4R Plus, a program coordinated by The Nature Conservancy with over 60 partner organizations designed to increase awareness and understanding among Iowa’s farmers and crop advisers of 1) 4R Nutrient Stewardship practices, and 2) conservation techniques. Over this six-year period, the 4R Plus program has developed and provided materials and educated farmers across Iowa. Based on our latest work in 2021, this program has already exceeded our goal of reaching 90,000 farmers in the state of Iowa.
One Acre Fund: CF Industries also supports food security through its support of the One Acre Fund, which provides financing, distribution, and training to approximately 1.3 million smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. CF Industries’ support is helping One Acre Fund farmers plant more than one million new trees each year and we are looking to expand our opportunities for partnership.
Global Action on Soil Health: In 2021 we joined the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH), a United Nations-inspired, multi-stakeholder effort to facilitate widespread adoption of land practices that will work to improve soil health through financial investment and policy actions. Corporate partners of CA4SH commit financial support to help farmers adopt soil best management practices; help with roadmap/business plan implementation; support the development of carbon market pricing mechanisms; advance technology and data measurement; and help develop public-private soil health stewardship programs, among other actions.
Partnerships to Accelerate Farm-Level Emission Reductions: In 2021, CF Industries joined with the International Fertilizer Association (IFA) and other leading industry members on a project to improve industry understanding of the factors impacting emissions from fertilizer use and to develop an industry roadmap of actions to reduce these emissions. CF Industries has also joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and its Agriculture 1.5 platform, to promote the development of the nitrogen fertilizer Sectoral Decarbonization Approach (SDA) and to work with other partners to enable reductions in emissions across the value chain.