Fertiliser risk transparency lags in food industry

Analysis of 45 of the world’s largest food giants – worth USD 2.6 trillion¹ – highlights inadequate environmental and financial risk disclosure related to fertiliser misuse

• One-third of companies do not disclose any fertiliser risks, despite the financial and environmental implications. While some companies are beginning to improve their disclosures, the level of detail and consistency remains inadequate.

• Many companies provide only superficial disclosures, lacking evidence of comprehensive evaluations on the financial and environmental costs associated with fertiliser misuse.

• Fertiliser misuse, including overuse, is a major driver of environmental damage, causing water pollution, destroying aquatic ecosystems and contributing to climate change through nitrous oxide emissions.

• Planet Tracker calls on financial institutions to demand comprehensive fertiliser risk disclosures across food company supply chains.

London, 29 January 2025: Planet Tracker’s latest report, Food Giants and Fertiliser Risk, highlights significant shortcomings in how food companies report on the environmental and financial risks associated with fertiliser misuse. The analysis of 45 of the world’s largest food companies, worth a combined USD 2.6 trillion, reveals that a third of these companies fail to acknowledge fertiliser-related risks entirely.

Fertiliser misuse is linked to significant environmental damage, such as eutrophication of freshwater and marine ecosystems, which leads to ecological dead zones, significant greenhouse gas emissions and nitrous oxide air pollution.

Building on insights from its previous ‘Fixing Nitrogen’ report, which highlighted the environmental and financial risks of nitrogen fertilisers, Planet Tracker’s new analysis examined over 5,000 documents from 2018-2023 using natural language processing (NLP). The aim was to assess how food producers, manufacturers, and retailers are referencing fertiliser-related risks to investors and stakeholders.

While the report found two-thirds of companies analysed demonstrate some awareness of fertiliser risks, most fail to provide detailed assessments of the impacts of fertiliser misuse in their own operations and value chains, such as the financial costs of fertiliser overuse.

The report highlights that timely interventions could reduce synthetic fertiliser use by 70% by 2050, yet very few companies consistently publish fertiliser risk disclosures. Only Golden Agri-Resources and Wilmar International, both food producers, have done so across all six years. Anheuser-Busch InBev has improved its disclosures since 2019, with a significant increase in disclosures in 2023.

Quote from Emma Amadi, Food and Land Use Lead at Planet Tracker:

“While there is growing awareness of the environmental risks posed by synthetic fertilisers, our findings expose a significant lack of transparency among the biggest global food system players. We remain a long way from seeing sustainable fertiliser use across the food system. Without comprehensive disclosures, investors and stakeholders are left in the dark about the true scale of these risks and the actions being taken to mitigate them.”

Further findings:

Sector disparities: Food manufacturers are disclosing more about fertiliser risks than food producers, who directly use fertilisers. However, when food producers do report, they offer more comprehensive information than manufacturers. Food retailers lag their peers significantly in disclosing fertiliser-related risks, possibly due to indirect exposure to fertiliser through their supply chains.

Superficial Disclosures: Many companies provide only superficial risk assessments. Company disclosures most frequently discuss the environmental risks related to the impact that fertiliser production and/or use has on external stakeholders but fail to disclose how this could impact their own operations and supply chains.

Growing Awareness: Companies are beginning to understand key risks and impacts of fertiliser misuse, but discussion of solutions remains limited. Some disclosures highlight solutions, mainly focusing on ‘optimising fertiliser use’, however there is a long way to go in terms of deploying these and developing more environmentally sustainable agricultural production.

Planet Tracker urges financial institutions to:

• Require food producers to publish plans to reduce synthetic fertiliser use by 70% by 2050.
• Request food producers to disclose progress against synthetic fertiliser reduction targets and investment in alternative production methods.
• Request food manufacturers and retailers to disclose supply chains progress in reducing fertiliser use and the support they are providing to suppliers in transitioning to alternative production methods.
• Require all food system companies to provide Scope 3 disclosures on fertiliser-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Read the full report here.

For more information, please contact:

Mike Marshall, ESG Communications | t: + 44 7728 816426 | mikem@esgcomms.com

Sally Palmer, Head of Communications, Planet Tracker t +447799472824 | sally@planet-tracker.org

About Planet Tracker

Planet Tracker is an initiative under Tracker Group alongside Carbon Tracker. An award-winning non-profit financial think tank, Planet Tracker aligning capital markets with planetary boundaries. Created with the vision of a financial system that is fully aligned with a net-zero, resilient, nature positive and just economy well before 2050, Planet Tracker generates break-through analytics that reveal both the role of capital markets in the degradation of our ecosystem and show the opportunities of transitioning to a zero-carbon, nature positive economy.