St. Louis: Monsanto on Tuesday announced plans to make its operations carbon-neutral by 2021 even as it acknowledged climate change as one of the biggest challenges facing humanity.
"We plan to make our operations carbon-neutral by 2021 through a unique programme targeted across seed and crop protection operations, as well as through collaboration with farmers," a company statement said
Monsanto produces seeds for fruits, vegetables and key crops such as corn, soybeans, and cotton.
However, there have been some controversies over its GM seeds in India and other countries. "Climate change is one of the biggest issues we face in agriculture, as well as one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity," Monsanto Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant said.
"While progress has been made to reduce agriculture's carbon footprint, we must work collectively to do even more if we are going to sustainably feed 9.6 billion people by 2050," he added.
Monsanto will drive carbon-neutral crop production in its own seed production operations by leveraging diverse products and agronomic approaches, such as breeding, plant biotechnology, data science, conservation tillage and cover cropping systems.
The company is also targeting its crop protection business to be carbon-neutral by 2021.
Previously, Monsanto announced a goal to reduce the operational greenhouse gas emissions intensity in its crop protection operations.
"To offset the remainder of its crop protection and other non-seed production operations, Monsanto is working to develop a programme to provide incentives to farmer customers who adopt carbon neutral crop production methods in exchange for part of their carbon reduction value."
"Monsanto will use those reductions as offsets to neutralise its remaining carbon footprint," the release stated.
Monsanto has developed the carbon-neutral crop models with the help of external experts and will share their data and modelling results with the broader agriculture, climate modelling and other communities, it added.
