Reducing the impact of agriculture on the climate

Avril innovates for an agriculture evolving its practices in order to reduce its impact on the environment, capable of adapting quickly to climate change. A more sustainable, more resilient agriculture, to better feed the earth, people, and animals. An overview of the progress made in 2022, together with the projects carried out within the three innovative platforms in support of agricultural transition: solutions for more environmentally friendly agriculture, ways to ensure sustainable livestock production, and adaptation to
climate change.

Approximately 80% of greenhouse gas emissions for the scope of Avril’s carbon footprint are linked to the purchase of agricultural raw material. It is therefore crucial to play a role in reducing the environmental impact of the agricultural sectors in question.

To achieve this, it is essential to support agricultural practices that reduce carbon emissions or store carbon in the soil. A crosscutting community was created focusing on the theme of agricultural carbon. This community brings together experts working on existing initiatives within the Group. Its purpose is to consolidate our internal skills on this complex and formative subject, to leverage our collective intelligence in order to advance our current projects with a common vision, and to identify future innovative opportunities. In 2022, Avril acquired a stake in Agdatahub, a leading technology platform for exchanging agricultural data. The objective: interconnect 380,000 farms with their 85,000 partners in France, and expand the massive use of agricultural data within a sovereign framework built on trust.

Agdatahub offers two flagship solutions for the various agricultural sectors and their partners: Agritrust, a solution for managing farmers’ consent to the use of their data, and API-Agro, the first platform for multi-sector agricultural data exchange.

Objective: to meet the needs of players in the agricultural sector in terms of disseminating data for the purposes of innovation that will benefit the farming profession, and to meet consumer demand for greater transparency. Through this support, Avril hopes to support the development of use cases promoting the sustainability of agricultural practices, such as OleoZE, created by Saipol in 2020 to remunerate farmers who contribute to reducing GHG emissions and storing carbon in the soil. Avril also innovates for more sustainable livestock farming. For example, Sanders has made a voluntary commitment to source 100% of its soybeans from guaranteed non-deforesting sources by 2025. Major R&D projects are also underway to reduce enteric fermentation emissions, which account for around 35% of agricultural GHG emissions in France. Thanks to its nutritional expertise and choice of formulation strategies, MiXscience is able to reduce enteric methane production by 5% compared with a “standard” feed. Another avenue is currently being explored to develop active ingredients added to feed, in order to achieve a 30% reduction in enteric methane emissions, with a satisfactory level of animal welfare.

It is also essential to explore innovation trajectories capable of helping the industry rapidly adapt to the consequences of climate change. Within the dedicated platform, a roadmap has been drawn up in collaboration with the innovation, strategy and subsidiary teams. s. Thematic priorities were identified to ensure our upstream agricultural sector could cope with these upheavals. First and foremost, it would appear to be a priority to support plant breeding and the development of varieties adapted to a new climate with improved water use efficiency and physiological characteristics that are less sensitive to heat. Climate change also raises the issue of integrating new types of crops into the rotations. For this reason, we are looking at the opportunities created by climate change for the potential development of new crops of interest to our oilseed and protein industries. A more resilient agricultural model will incorporate new crop practices, in terms of carbon storage, biodiversity protection, and GHG reduction prospects. The questions are manifold: what are these new, more resilient production models? What economic models can be developed to serve these crucial objectives while at the same time providing economic added value to farmers ?

Finally, we need to study how our upstream agricultural sector can be supported in managing increased risks, particularly those linked to drought but also to changes in practices. Anticipating risks will be key, particularly in managing water resources, as well as
the ability to deal with much more frequent climatic hazards.