Sowing the seeds of sustainable agriculture
- our Good Growth Plan legacy
Our sustainability goals have been transforming farming since 2013
Our early sustainability work paved the way for our Syngenta Group Sustainability Priorities announced in April 2024, which build on the momentum and take the next steps in transforming the way our business works, how we innovate and how we partner with others.
Discover the achievements of The Good Growth Plan
More than a decade ago, we were among the first agriculture businesses to launch an industry-focused sustainability plan with concrete targets to improve farming and fight climate change.
The Good Growth Plan, formed by Syngenta AG in 2013, set bold targets to make our Crop Protection and Seed businesses more sustainable and to improve agricultural productivity while reducing its environmental impact.
Working with our farmers, we set concrete targets to make crops more efficient, rescue more farmland, help biodiversity flourish, empower smallholders, help people stay safe and to look after every worker.
It was an ambitious global effort that quickly bore fruit: we developed tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, to make millions of hectares of soil health and to protect biodiversity.
Changing Climate – Changing the Good Growth Plan Targets
In 2018 we evolved our targets to accelerate innovation for farmers, building on the momentum of our sustainability efforts.
Although the goals we set five years prior were ambitious, by 2018 we had made excellent progress, in some cases exceeding our targets ahead of schedule.
Key achievements of the Good Growth Plan:
By 2018, we surpassed our initial target of improving the fertility of 10 million hectares of land on the brink of degradation - in fact, we benefitted an area about the size of Guatemala.
As part of our first Good Growth Plan, we exceeded our initial aim of enhancing biodiversity on 5 million hectares of farmland by 27 percent.
We helped more than 70 million people in finding new ways to help people use our products safely, some two thirds more than our 2013 target.
After achieving most of our sustainability goals early, we renewed our commitment to curbing our emissions in 2020, making new global commitments to reduce agriculture’s carbon footprint and to help farmers deal with the extreme weather patterns caused by climate change.
We set a target of investing USD 2 billion in sustainable agriculture breakthroughs by 2025 and to deliver two sustainable technology breakthroughs each year.
We reaffirmed our commitment to enhance biodiversity and soil health on 3 million hectares of rural land every year by providing technologies, services and training to farmers.
We committed to reducing the carbon intensity of our operations by 50% by 2030 to support the goals of the Paris Agreement.
And we reinforced our commitment to help people stay safe and healthy by training 8 million farm workers on safe use every year and striving for fair labor across our entire supply chain.
Carbon neutral agriculture
The Good Growth Plan produced soil health projects and biodiversity projects on farms across the world.
These helped avoid 7.9 million tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions, demonstrating technologies and practices that can reduce the billions of tonnes coming from agricultural production.
In 2022, we contributed 7.9 million tonnes of carbon benefit potential on farmland and invested USD 1.3 billion in sustainable agricultural breakthroughs.
As an example, our ENOGEN® hybrid corn, which is used as cattle feed, delivers feed efficiency gains over regular corn by improving starch and organic matter digestibility.
Based on peer reviewed research and external life cycle assessment studies for dairy cows and beef cattle production in the US market, we estimated that ENOGEN® use in 2022 accounted for about 1.8 million tonnes of avoided CO2e emissions.
GHG Emissions
In our own operations across Syngenta AG, absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions have decreased by 33% since 2016.
However in 2020, rapid growth in the business saw emissions outstrip these reductions, especially in Scope 3 emissions by our suppliers, and so we recorded an overall 12% increase.
Luciane Copetti is one of the many real people behind The Good Growth Plan. As both a grower and Secretary of Environment of a Brazilian town in the state of Mato Grosso, she helped mobilize growers to reforest areas of their farmland.
Luciane Copetti is one of the many real people behind The Good Growth Plan. As both a grower and Secretary of Environment of a Brazilian town in the state of Mato Grosso, she helped mobilize growers to reforest areas of their farmland.
Péter Szabadka from Hungary adopts conservation agriculture practices on his family farm.
Péter Szabadka from Hungary adopts conservation agriculture practices on his family farm.
Priscar Mwangangi is a farmer in Kenya. As part of The Good Growth Plan she helped to empower other smallholders in her community by providing training and sharing her knowledge.
Priscar Mwangangi is a farmer in Kenya. As part of The Good Growth Plan she helped to empower other smallholders in her community by providing training and sharing her knowledge.
Investment + Innovation
= the Good Growth Plan
Innovation – and the investment needed to make it happen – is behind many of our tangible achievements. We committed USD 1.57 billion until the end of 2023 to discover real breakthroughs to support regenerative agriculture.
So far, we’ve achieved new, safe products that make plants stronger, healthier and more resilient to pests, diseases and extreme weather.
Lowest residues in food
Food crops need to have the lowest residues of any products and our programs can achieve this. Since 2020 they’ve produced enough fruits and vegetables with the lowest residues to provide the daily intake for 11.9 million people – 4.8 million tonnes of produce.
Healthy Soil and Blooming Biodiversity
Healthy soil is the foundation of agriculture’s action to mitigate climate change and ensure food security, and it is a complex undertaking. We’ve been raising awareness about the importance of soil throughout the lifetime of The Good Growth Plan. Along with partners, we’ve provided many programs, services and tools for use in growers’ fields.
Through our soil and biodiversity programs, we've benefited 38.7 million hectares of farmland.
Digging deep for data
Working with researchers and academics, we developed LIVINGRO™, a platform that measures over 50 important data points in the field. The data provides insights into the soil microbiome, its ability to sequester carbon and its vulnerability to erosion and infiltration. All of this is used to support regenerative farming.
Biodiversity benefits
Operation Pollinator™ is an international biodiversity program to boost the number of pollinating insects, small mammals and birds on farms. The Danish island of Bornholm is just one of many projects that have boosted biodiversity by planting dazzling strips of wildflowers. These biodiverse habitats also help to improve crop yields and crop quality and act as buffer zones against soil erosion and runoff.
Making Land more Productive and less Degraded
We made it a priority to grow more on each hectare of farmland while using fewer inputs like pesticides and fertilizers. As of 2019, growers working with the Good Growth Plan increased the productivity of their land by 18.8% on average, compared to 2014.
While we’ve supported farms of all sizes, small family farms – which produce a third of the world’s food – were particularly important. By 2019 we had reached 20 million small farmers and improved their productivity by 28.5% on average, compared to 2014.
Restoring already degraded farmland is just as essential as preventing future degradation. Our programs have protected more than 14.1m hectares of farmland from degradation, which is 5 million hectares beyond what we had originally planned.
Better Lives, Better Livelihoods
The Good Growth Plan was also about the people who spend their days on farms, and our employees who support them. Our goals were to improve livelihoods on farms, make sure work was safe and done under fair labor conditions, and have zero injuries among our employees.
Training in safe use of our products was a priority. Since 2014, working with partners, we trained 74 million farmers on safe use, over 95% of which were in the Asia Pacific region or China.
We also wanted to make sure suppliers in our crop protection, seeds and flower supply chains were operating sustainably. 99.5% of suppliers are in our sustainability and fair labor programs.
Fruitful Partnerships to Change Agriculture
The Good Growth Plan was always designed to be done in partnership, not by us alone.
In 10 years, we have collaborated with a huge variety of organisations and our strategic partnerships continue.
We have worked with global non-profit organizations like TNC and Solidaridad and food companies like Walmart, Kellogg, and Fresh Del Monte, alongside our collaboration with academic and research organizations.
Nature first
Innovation for Nature is our multi-year collaboration with TNC to scale up regenerative agriculture. It brings together Syngenta Group's research and development capabilities, TNC’s scientific and conservation expertise, and other partners. The focus is on soil health, efficient use of resources, and protecting natural habitats, and it runs in the world’s major agricultural regions.
Better conditions on the ground
We have worked with Solidaridad over many years in several countries. Our projects together include improving fair labor standards, for example, in Syngenta Seeds’ supply chain.
A bigger impact with food companies
In partnership with Kellogg’s, we supported InGrained™, a program to reduce methane emissions from rice production in North America. In Costa Rica, we partnered with Walmart to help tomato farmers implement Operation Pollinator and LIVINGRO™ principles to increase yields and protect the environment. In the same country, we have implemented agronomic methods from LIVINGRO™ for Fresh Del Monte on melon fields.
Want to know more?
Learn about our new Sustainability Priorities.
Read Our Good Growth Plan reports.
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