By Femi Akinola
A renowned world’s leading soil and plant nutrition solution producer, OCP Group, has disclosed its preparedness to achieve a full carbon neutrality by 2040.
The Morocco based company made its aim known as the world’s environmental policy makers gathered this week in Nairobi, Kenyan’s capital city, to set the global environmental agenda.
NatureNews reports that the focus of the conference this year is on the tripple planetary crisis of climate change; pollution; biodiversity loss and land degradation.
OCP Group is reputed for its high profiles in championing the crucial role of soil health, particularly in Africa, in addressing the planetary issues and making sustainable agriculture and increased food production a reality in the continent.
The conference, co-chaired by Morocco and OCP Group, the Senior OCP experts attending the conference have tapped from their company’s experiences to help policy makers identify how agricultural transition can be achieved through the right policies and internationl partnerships that will foster collaborative global drive.
Headquatered in Morocco, OCP is the custodian of 70% of the world’s known phosphate reserves, an essential nutrient for healthy crops and soils, but half of all soils, particularly in Africa.
With over a century of expertise, an expected turnover of $14bn in 2025, some 20,000 employees and customers on five continents, OCP is investing massively in both sustainable production and farming.
Checks on OCP activities in the past revealed that since 2012, the company has trippled its production capacity and aims to produce 20 million tons of fully sustainable soil nutrients by 2027.
NatureNews gathered that a sum of $13 billion has been committed to OCP greening investment strategy between 2023 and 2027 to make the company’s water and energy use 100% renewable in 2024, and 2027, respectively.
OCP has also invested the sum of $7 billion in producing green hydrogen and green ammonia from wind and solar power, to enable the company meet its own needs for ammonia, a major but energy-intensive component of some fertilizers, by 2032, in addition to setting an ambitious target of achieving full carbon neutrality by 2040.
NatureNews reports that OCP’s commitment to sustainability does not stop when its product leaves the factory gate. It was committed to a farmer-centric strategy (a long-term approach to optimizing plant nutrition, soil t farĝmer’s linaivelihoods) to create sustainable financial and social values for future generations.
OCP leads the sector in R&D spend, with its scientists both in the lab and on the land, researching new products, services and solution for farmers, enhanced by growing range of international research partnerships dedicated to making sustainable agriculture a reality.
OCP reach is global, but its focus is on the African continent, where crop yields are less than 25% of what they could be.
In an attempt to close this wide yield gap, the company has allocated 4MT of its total production to Africa, over quarter of its output, and invested some $5 billion in new production capacity in Morocco, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ghana, and Nigeria.
From the data generated by the mapping and analysis of soils across 50 million hectares of Africa, OCP’s scientists have designed over 40 fertilization formulas customized to meet specific local soil, crop, and climate conditions.
OCP has trained over a quarter of a million African farmers in climate and nature-positive farming techniques using these customized soil nutrients, and achieving significant yield increase: 25% for maize in Tanzania, 35% for rice in Ghana, and 113% for teff in Ethiopia, among others.
As boosting yields, OCP will be spreading the message among the 193 countries and 4,000 delegates who are participating in this year’s UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, that practical and effective solutions to the tripple planetary crisis can be found in African soil, through unleashing its potential to feed not only Africa but also to become a guarantor of global food security at the same time as combating climate change and conserving the environment.
