Our strategy
To help transform our industry and feed the growing global population, we are moving beyond nutrition, supporting farmers in operating more sustainably while also working across the supply chain to drive positive change in the way we source, produce and utilize feed ingredients.
Succeeding in our purpose of Feeding the Future will require us to make significant changes in three strategic areas that offer both clear business opportunities and substantial benefits for people, animals and the planet:
1. Supporting sustainable production enabled by technology
Farmers remain critical to the food sector’s ability to feed the world, but they are under enormous pressures. They need to achieve strong animal performance to be profitable while also reducing antibiotic use without failing to curb diseases, improving animal welfare standards and reducing their environmental footprints. We can support them in facing these challenges.
We want to be the partner of choice that farmers trust to provide animal nutrition solutions based on science that help them operate more efficiently and sustainably – regardless of whether they are smallholders farming shrimp in Asia or North American vertically-integrated meat corporations.
We are doing this by becoming a farm-focused solutions provider, using the latest technology to facilitate our solutions and take the guesswork out of sustainable farming for our customers.
2. Zeroing in on nutrition, health and farming
With nutrition core to our business, our aim in the short term is to build services in animal health and farming methods to help customers raise healthy animals. We are zooming in geographically on where population growth is happening, and quality protein is most urgently needed.
Nutrition, health and farming are the three elements we need to optimise to ensure farmed animals reach their full potential and we use the planet’s resources wisely. By focusing on this “magic triangle,” we will be able to provide our customers with precision nutrition, best-in-class farming and preventive animal health solutions that help them produce more in a more sustainable way, while also addressing welfare concerns.
Our feed additives and young animal solutions, along with our work on alternative ingredients, are prerequisites in helping us support farmers in achieving strong healthy animals and animal performance. Our focus on the “magic triangle” will enable us to move beyond nutrition in the mid-to-long term.
3. Sourcing & developing future protein ingredients
The way we source certain feed ingredients today puts too much strain on the planet’s resources to be sustainable in years to come. Feed ingredient production accounts for 45% of greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock industry. Instead of tapping precious resources such as wild fish, or farming feed crops to the detriment of natural ecosystems, we can continue to find ways to produce feed ingredients more sustainably. And we can use co-products of the food industry that would otherwise be wasted, as well as novel ingredients such as insect protein, in feed formulation optimised to meet the needs of animals. Nutreco is working to drive this forward in our industry.
We’re also working to develop completely novel, sustainable ingredients. For example, our Nutreco Exploration team is already creating new phyto-complex ingredients for feed additives and is also developing microtechnology programs that mine the function of the microbiome for ‘biome-active’ application in aquatic species and livestock. (A biome-active is a gut bacterial function which, when added to the feed, displays a beneficial effect on animal performance, health, welfare.)
While we remain fully committed to supporting animal farmers, we know that our industry will have to maximise all sources of protein to feed the growing global population and make our food production chain more resilient. So, we see alternative proteins as another emerging solution in addition to traditional animal farming.
In particular, we believe producing meat or seafood from animal cells holds great potential to address the global challenge of feeding the population sustainably, alongside and not instead of animal farming. We are partnering with companies that are working on alternative proteins that enable people to eat meat produced in this novel way and have taken the first steps to grow our presence in this area through strategic investments.
All of this together will ultimately enable our industry to feed the world.
Our diverse teams make it possible
We believe that the best way to drive forward our purpose is through diverse and inclusive teams, that reflect our customers and stakeholders. This diversity helps us to understand and serve our customers and communities better and strengthens our ability to innovate, create and problem-solve. It will remain a major focus for our business in years to come.
