It’s been said that sustainability is a journey, that you don’t suddenly wake up one day achieving your end goals. It takes time, effort, and resources to get to where you are going.
For more than 100 years, the fertilizer industry – and agriculture at large – has benefited off the work of science and technology. Starting in 1918, with the Haber Bosch process, which made the production of ammonia fertilizer economically feasible. Since then, the industry has kept refining not just how fertilizers are made, but how they are used by plants.
Bipartisanship does still exist, though often in short supply these days. Earlier this month, the Senate cleared a bipartisan three-year extension (S. 4096) of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. If it becomes law, S. 4096 will extend the current CFATS program through July 27, 2023.
Sometime in my youth, I learned about the wordplay that illustrates the danger of making assumptions. For the uninitiated, lets just say that the end-result turns the “assumer,” into the first three letters of the word. So, I try not to make assumptions – at least, not about important stuff. Things like cars stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks, strange dogs not biting – you get the picture.
This article was originally published in the May/June 2020 issue of Argus Media's Fertilizer Focus magazine.
Based on recent discussions among members of The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) board of directors, more than 80 percent agree that sustainability and environmental impact are the issues that will most affect their businesses for the next three to five years.
This post is part of a series highlighting work across the fertilizer industry as featured in TFI’s State of the Fertilizer Industry Report. Visit http://www.fertilizerreport.org to learn more.
We are living in unprecedented times as the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed our country to a near standstill. But in agriculture, the show must go on – even during a pandemic. As farmers headed back to the fields this spring, the fertilizer industry has been right beside them making sure they have the fertilizer they need, when and where they need it.
This post is part of a series highlighting work across the fertilizer industry as featured in TFI’s State of the Fertilizer Industry Report. Visit www.fertilizerreport.org to learn more.
No matter where you live, there’s a good chance someone in your community is hungry. According to USDA, in 2019, more than 37 million people in the United States struggled with hunger. Now, with the Coronavirus outbreak, the number of people struggling to find adequate food is growing exponentially. In recent weeks, many food banks are reporting as much as a 50 percent uptick in demand.
In the past few months, we’ve seen the business community make some major announcements regarding their role in combating large societal challenges. Larry Fink, CEO of the investment firm BlackRock, acknowledged that climate change is “driving a profound reassessment of risk,” and therefore they plan to realign a significant portion of their capital to match their investors’ values.