Tate & Lyle Extends Its Regenerative Agriculture Programme into Europe
Tate & Lyle has established a new regenerative agriculture programme to support corn suppliers in France to farm more sustainably. Developed with farming cooperatives and representative groups, and Regrow Ag, the agriculture resilience platform provider enabling companies to measure, model, and accelerate regenerative outcomes across global supply chains, the programme will enable participating farmers to understand the impact of adopting regenerative agronomic practices. In turn, Tate & Lyle will monitor the environmental improvements it is supporting on thousands of acres of corn used to make many of its speciality ingredients.
From farm to fork, the provision of food is responsible for around one third of greenhouse gas emissions. To satisfy the demands of a growing global population, society must produce much more food, and so reducing the climate impact of the end-to-end food value chain will be critical to solving the climate crisis.
Through an agreement with three of its largest farming partners – Armbruster Grande Cultures, Euralis Groupe Coopératif and Groupe Coopératif Maïsadour – who represent growers in the northeast and southwest of France, Tate & Lyle is supporting farmer efforts to strengthen resilience to the impacts of climate change. Practices to support soil health prioritised in the programme include: low and no till, which minimises soil disturbance; cover crops, which support soil health; and nitrogen management to reduce the use of synthetic fertilisers. Tate & Lyle and its partners will use Regrow’s AI-driven software platform to quantify environmental impacts and monitor trends in participating farms. Regrow and local agronomists are partnering to support farmers with data entry and analysis to inform farm planning and integrate into Tate & Lyle and its customers’ environmental reporting.
This programme builds on Tate & Lyle’s existing, more mature regenerative agriculture programmes, which support corn growers in the US and stevia growers in China. Tate & Lyle maintains acres equivalent to the volume of corn it buys annually in its regenerative agriculture programmes.