Corporate responsibility: Our top 5 wins

Through its corporate responsibility process, Sollio Agriculture has developed several tools to help farmers adopt agricultural practices that are more sustainable and just as profitable. Here are our top five wins of the past year.

1) Inaugurating the CRF AgriTech plant

The CRF AgriTech plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, produces controlled‑release fertilizers (CRF).

These innovative fertilizers come with many advantages for field crop farmers. In addition to improving yields, they limit nutrient losses and GHG emissions, which means they’re better for the environment.

According to the International Fertilizer Association, farmers can use 20%–30% less CRF than they would conventional products.

Not only that, but the technology used at the new plant also reduces the amount of polymer required to coat the fertilizer by 40% compared to previous generations of the product.

The plant is even strategically located near rail lines and Sollio Agriculture’s procurement sources, which reduces shipping costs, product delivery times, and GHG emissions from transport.

2) Launching the Carbon Calculator

The Carbon Calculator helps our agri‑advisors provide farm‑specific advice to dairy farmers looking to reduce their carbon footprint.

Based on our ration calculation software, the dashboard allows farmers and agri‑advisors to track the carbon footprint of a dairy herd’s feed component.

The calculator also shows different ways to reduce the farm’s GHG emissions.

3) Developing a new sustainable farming diagnostic tool

Field crop farmers can use our sustainable farming diagnostic tool to see how sustainable their operation is.

The tool provides custom diagnostic overviews displayed in an easy‑to‑read infographic. Farmers can then use that information to find ways to improve their farm’s resilience to climate change while remaining profitable.

The sustainable farming diagnostic tool rates farms on multiple factors, including:

• Cover crop management

• Crop rotation

• Nitrogen management

• Soil and surface residue management

• Riparian buffer use

   

4) Rolling out AgroCarbone Grandes Cultures

The AgroCarbone Grandes Cultures project is a collaboration between Sollio Agriculture and Coop Carbone (link in French only). Launched in May 2023, the three‑year project aims to help field crop farmers reduce and sequester GHG emissions.

Project goals include:

• Developing new offset protocols for Québec’s agriculture industry

• Building business models that appeal to farmers and all other industry players

• Optimizing the agronomic, economic, social and environmental performance of Canadian farms

   

5) Providing online OHS training

We set up an e‑learning platform for our field operations teams.

This allowed us to offer a range of occupational health and safety training courses online, providing greater flexibility for our employees and managers.

In 2022–2023, more than 2,300 training courses were completed by nearly 400 Sollio Agriculture employees.

To learn more about our corporate responsibility process and wins, check out the latest corporate and cooperative responsibility report  for Sollio Cooperative Group and its three divisions: Sollio Agriculture, BMR Group, and Olymel.