Sustainability in practice, the Bayer Carbon initiative

Climate change, food security and biodiversity are challenging issues that humanity is facing. In this context, agriculture plays an essential role in developing solutions that balance the demand for food with the need to produce more efficiently and sustainably, preserving the biodiversity of natural resources.

As a company, we at Bayer are clear about our drivers: the vision "Health for all, Hunger for none" and the purpose "Science for a better life". As a leader in the agricultural segment, we guide our operations based on three strategic pillars: Innovation, Digital Transformation and Sustainability.

We are committed to building agriculture to benefit rural producers, consumers and our planet. Therefore, in 2019 alone, we invested more than 2,3 billion euros in Research & Development, to continue offering personalized solutions around the world and meet the main needs of our farmer customers.

On this journey towards innovation, sustainability is an indispensable word, with a series of definitions. For us, it means three solid commitments to be fulfilled over the next ten years: helping to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in agriculture by 30%, reducing the environmental impact of technologies by 30% and improving lives of 100 million small farmers globally, which includes Brazil as one of the world's agri-environmental powers.

The 30% reduction in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions represents too great a challenge for us to build alone and, therefore, collaboration is a keyword in our vocabulary. In Brazil, we started the Bayer Carbon Initiative, in partnership with Embrapa and producers, which aims to build a carbon capture model to increase sustainability in agribusiness and generate additional income for farmers. In the long term, the goal is to achieve the zero-carbon future for agriculture, to which Bayer is committed.

Partnerships to benefit farmers, consumers and our planet

Increasingly, companies are establishing partnerships with the government, third sector and academia, with the aim of joining efforts towards a better life on our planet, ensuring that the increase in temperature on Earth does not exceed 1,5°C, which is the limit established by science to avoid a climate catastrophe. The producer knows that extremes such as excessive rain and dry weather have become more frequent and the accumulation of carbon equivalent is part of this problem.

Today, large companies around the world are faced with the challenge of neutralizing carbon in their operations and, as well as governments, are moving in this direction, positively impacting the global market. To make this happen more quickly, Bayer is focused on developing solutions and partnerships on three fronts: ABC, MRV and Market.

ABC, as the name suggests, is to promote Low Carbon Agriculture, a pioneering initiative in Brazil, which for around 10 years has helped to promote techniques for capturing carbon in agriculture, such as: direct planting, systems integration, rotation of cultures, among other practices. We are basically talking about producing carbon, storing it in the soil and keeping a large part of it there.

MRV is the abbreviation for Measurement - Reporting - Verification and consists, in a simplified way, of converting the stored carbon into credits and, from there, monetizing it (converting it into money). To achieve this, we are investing heavily in cost reduction, methods that are easier to replicate and, of course, accepted by science and the market.

The third pillar is to help foster the carbon market, both voluntary and regulated. We have no doubt that co-creation is the best way to support the construction of a regulated market in Brazil, without carbon taxes.

In the field, we have already launched the Bayer Carbon initiative, with around 500 producers, in 14 states in Brazil, to learn together. We have no doubt it will be an incredible walk. The Carbon Initiative is sustainability in practice, in Brazil and around the world.

By Eduardo Bastos, Bayer Sustainability Director for Latin America