Today, the international food and beverage company Paulig announced a sustainable farming partnership with Lantmännen, a Swedish agricultural cooperative. As part of the collaboration, Swedish farmers will adopt even more sustainable cultivation methods within the framework of Lantmännen’s program for Farming of the Future: Climate & Nature. As of harvest 2022, Lantmännen Cerealia will supply Paulig with 17,000 tons of wheat flour cultivated in accordance with the program, reducing the climate impact by as much as 30 percent*. The flour will be used to annually produce 400 million Santa Maria tortillas – baked at Paulig’s Landskrona, Sweden, factory – to meet Nordic and Baltic market demand.
The collaboration is a big step forward for Swedish agriculture and will help approximately 20 farms transition roughly 2 700 hectares to more sustainable farming.
“We at Paulig believe that the food industry is a part of the climate solution, and that agricultural transformation is key to achieving sustainable food systems. By working together with our partners and suppliers in the food value chain, we are able to reduce the climate impact of our products and make more sustainable choices available to consumers. This partnership with Lantmännen marks an important milestone in the realization of Paulig’s science-based climate targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the value chain by 50 percent by 2030”, says Rolf Ladau, CEO of Paulig.
Paulig has set very ambitious climate targets which have been approved by the Science-Based Target initiative and are committed to limit the global temperature rise to a maximum of 1.5°C. Lantmännen’s Climate & Nature program drives the implementation of more sustainable farming practices to meet the tough requirements defined by the Paris Agreement.
“Partnerships throughout the food value chain are key to achieving a greater impact and transforming the food system. We are proud to be able to announce this collaboration and welcome Paulig to the program. Together, we will be able to accelerate transformation, meet market demand for more sustainable products, while at the same time making it profitable for farmers to adopt more sustainable farming practices,” says Karolina Valdemarsson, Country Managing Director at Lantmännen Cerealia Sweden.
The cultivation methods used within the Climate & Nature program reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 30 percent by implementing climate-smart plant nutrition, fossil-free fuels and precision farming. Biodiversity is enhanced by so-called “skylark plots” (unseeded areas where birds can land and find food), flowering zones and chemical-free seed treatment.
Tortillas is Paulig’s biggest product category, making this collaboration highly impactful from a sustainability perspective.
“Currently, 700,000 portions of Santa Maria Tex Mex are served each day across 40 markets. This partnership is meaningful to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions in one of our largest value chains. In 2023, we will begin baking with this more sustainable wheat flour and the tortillas will hit store shelves in the Nordic and Baltic countries later that year,” says Henrik Samuelson, SVP Scandinavia & Central Europe, Paulig.
