Malting company Boortmalt has announced a partnership with regenerative agriculture business Soil Capital as part of an effort to cut emissions from suppliers.
Boortmalt said that it is aiming to reduce emissions of its allocated barely supply across the world by 30% by 2030.
The partnership with Soil Capital targets ‘Scope 3’ emissions, which are emissions that are not produced directly or indirectly by a business, but that the business influences upstream or downstream, such as emissions from suppliers to that business.
In this case, Scope 3 emissions includes emissions from tillage growers supplying Boortmalt.
Scope 3 emissions differ from Scope 1 emissions (which result directly from a business’ own activities) and Scope 2 emissions (which result from the production of a business’ inputs, such as emissions from the production of energy supplied to the business by public or private utilities).
According to Boortmalt, the majority of its emissions come from its supply chain from producers and co-operatives supplying the barley used in its malting process.
The business said that its “commitment to support changes to farming practices and to enable carbon sequestration” requires strategies at farm level to maximise ground cover, replace synthetic inputs with organic ones, minimise soil disturbances, and diversify crop rotation.
Boortmalt CEO Yvan Schaepman said that regenerative agriculture is a “strong lever to cultivate sustainable produce”.
“But the task is huge, complex and involves various degrees of adaptations for our suppliers. With that idea in mind, we have entered into his partnership with Soil Capital to support the pace of adaptation and make a difference.”
Boortmalt said that Soil Capital , an agronomy firm specialising in regenerative agriculture, will help the malting giant with strategic advisory services to provide “on-the-ground” support for suppliers.
The partnership has a number of objectives for 2030, including: reducing Boortmalt’s Scope 3 emissions by 30%; reducing the carbon footprint of barley sourced by the malting business by 200,000t of CO2 equivalent; and increasing the proportion of barley sourced from regenerative farming.
CEO of Soil Capital, Chuck de Liedekerke said: “We are impressed by Boortmalt’s…strategy to reduce Scope 3 emissions by working hand-in-hand with their suppliers.
“We believe this is the right way to achieve the necessary transition at scale. By rewarding farmers’ work and improving supply chain resilience, we will ultimately drastically improve carbon emissions from Scope 3,” he added.