New technology and digital services are becoming ever more essential for farmers world-wide. This year, Syngenta Group joined the START HACK as an industry partner hoping that the hackers could offer new ways of thinking.
Our Good Growth Plan puts the urgent fight against climate change and biodiversity loss at the heart of farming’s productive future and the global economic recovery.
We are making 4 ambitious global commitments to reduce agriculture’s carbon footprint and to help farmers deal with the extreme weather patterns caused by climate change. These commitments – driving our innovation – will help farmers and society sustainably recover from the ongoing effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Time for action
Climate change is an existential threat, and we need to act before it is too late. The effects are a huge challenge for farmers and farm workers trying to ensure the world’s supply of food. The Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted the fragility of the agriculture ecosystem, putting even more strain on those earning a living from farming than before.
Our Good Growth Plan aims to take on these challenges by making agriculture more resilient and sustainable and driving a better, greener, recovery.
Farmers on the front line
Farmers are the first to suffer from extreme weather and agriculture has a pivotal role to play in fighting climate change.
We must help farmers address it with new technologies and services, both to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. According to our recent survey with Ipsos MORI, 72% of farmers are worried about the impact climate change will have on their ability to grow food over the next five years.
Our commitments
Under the Good Growth Plan, Syngenta Group is accelerating our innovation to provide solutions for farmers. Our target is to invest $2bn in sustainable agriculture breakthroughs by 2025 and to deliver two sustainable technology breakthroughs each year.
We will also strive for carbon neutral agriculture, both on farms and in our operations. We remain committed to enhance biodiversity and soil health on 3 million hectares of rural land every year, which we will do by providing technologies, services, and training to farmers.
Our Syngenta Seeds and Syngenta Crop Protection business units also commit to reducing the carbon intensity of our operations by 50% by 2030 to support the goals of the Paris Agreement. Our commitment had been validated and endorsed by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
Alongside this, we are reinforcing our commitment to help people stay safe and healthy by training 8 million farm workers on safe use every year and striving for fair labor across our entire supply chain.
We can only achieve our ambitious targets in partnership and in open dialogue about the value of agriculture innovation for farmers, nature and society, supported by strong Board level governance of sustainability.
