Nutrien campaigning to raise awareness for World Hunger Day

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

As World Hunger Day took place, May 28, Nutrien worked to raise awareness for the occasion and for the rising issue of global food insecurity.

“The big thing for Nutrien is, our purpose is feeding the future, and so for us, that really is about being the world’s largest provider of crop solutions, and bringing awareness to global food insecurity,” said Katrina Huack Miller, Nutrien’s Carseland general manager. “If you look at the basic facts about world hunger, and you look at 2021 statistics, 2.3 billion people, which is slightly under 30 per cent of our population worldwide … they were either moderately or severely impoverished.”

Though Nutrien did not host a specific event for World Hunger Day to fundraise or increase awareness, instead the team is working to actively campaign for the topic. 

Huack Miller said in addition to their efforts to increase world hunger awareness, the team is working to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture and their product developments.

“Our team manufactures nitrogen products from natural gas, air and steam. It’s amazing that the work we do here is enabling farmers to speed plant growth and aid in animal growth and development,” she said. “Across the business, we’re focused on reducing GHG emissions during the manufacturing process of low-carbon ammonia, the basic building block of all nitrogen fertilizers, by up to 80 per cent through carbon capture technology and other low-emission production technologies.”

According to their release, local talent at the facility just south of Strathmore are using world-class technology to reduce costs and their environmental impact, enabling better yields for farmers to feed the world. 

At the Redwater nitrogen facility here in Alberta, approximately 500 tonnes per day of CO2 are captured for use in enhanced oil recovery and permanently sequestered deep underground.

Local facilities are also lowering carbon intensity through N2O abatement technology and the use of low-carbon by-product hydrogen, produced from other processes to create a lower carbon intensity than conventional hydrogen.

Huack Miller added Nutrien is aiming to help local farmers adapt to changing climate patterns in order to yield larger crop outputs, as well as to develop innovative new agriculture solutions.

“Our growers are experiencing wetter springs, hotter and drier summers and the winters are becoming much more challenging,” she said. “Being able to produce more food with the environmental footprint that is ultimately shrinking on us means that there is a lot of work that has to go into making sure our crop services are going to be able to increate to meet demand.”

More information regarding Nutrien’s World Hunger awareness campaign is available online.