Simplifying the Sustainability Conversation, with Sustainable Ag and Retail Strategy VP Matt Marshall

When you talk about sustainable agriculture, you could be talking about greenhouse gas reduction, practice changes, nutrient management, or any number of other pieces of the sustainability puzzle.

Our mission at Nutrien Ag Solutions has always been to support farmers in their operations, helping them minimize their environmental impact while maximizing their margins.

But starting that sustainability conversation is tricky, when no two farm fields are the same.

So on this episode, we're meeting Matt Marshall, Vice President of Sustainable Ag and Retail Strategy at Nutrien Ag Solutions, to discuss how the company is simplifying the sustainability value proposition under its new FARMSMART brand.

Plus, we break some exciting news about a new sustainability milestone for Nutrien Ag Solutions that Sally has been pursuing for a long time.

Episode Transcript

Matt Marshall:

And we felt that there was a need to try and drive some simplicity around this whole sustainability conversation. And so a brand helped to facilitate that, but also a building recognition of what that brand represents. And when a grower sees that, they see value, they see something that's focused on sustainability and something that's frankly worth their time. 

Dusty Weis:

Welcome to the FARMSMART Podcast presented by Nutrien Ag Solutions. Every month we're talking to sustainable agriculture experts from throughout the industry, along with our very own Tom Daniel, director of North America Retail and Growers Sustainable Ag, and Dr. Sally Flis, director of Program Design and Outcome Management. As the leading source of insight for growers on evolving their sustainability practices while staying grounded in agronomic proof, FARMSMART is where sustainability meets opportunity. We don't just talk change, we are out in the field helping you identify the products, practices and technologies that bring the future to your fields faster. 

On this episode, we're going to meet Matt Marshall, Vice President of Sustainable Ag and Retail Strategy at Nutrien Ag Solutions to discuss how the company is simplifying the sustainability value proposition under its new FARMSMART brand, and we'll break some exciting news about a new sustainability milestone. I'm Dusty Weis and Tom and Sally. I know you've got a lot going on right now, but it's that time of year when you're winding down your 2023 projects and starting to look ahead to 2024. So I've got to ask you, Tom, what is it that you guys are working on right now?

Tom Daniel:

Dusty, we've had a lot of projects have grown, especially in the last couple of years, and Sally's in charge, she's the one that helps us put those programs together and designs them for the field use, and of course my team's responsibility is to integrate those into our retail group and help them through these projects. But Sally, I think one of the big projects that we've had, that has really grown now has been the Ardent Mills Project. There's new geographies that we're introducing that project to, and I'm just real excited about that partnership with Ardent Mills, and I just want to get your comments on it. 

Sally Flis:

Ardent Mills has grown year over year, we keep expanding that program, it's still primarily focused on different classes of wheat, so winter wheat, spring wheat, hard red, soft white, all the different classes of wheat, a little bit of durum, but we're also adding in additional crops. So for example, on the 2022 cropping season, we also recorded information and growers got paid for entering data on chickpeas. We'll continue to have chickpeas, are a part of the 2023 cropping season data that we're starting to reach out to growers and get entered and rolled over into the new cropping season within Agrible, and I think we may add some sorghum acres. 

So, really starting to not only expand the acres but also expand the crops that we're looking at. And with Ardent Mills, we're looking at some rather unique crops. Wheat is pretty typical, but chickpeas and some of these other alternative protein sources are getting to be a bigger and bigger part of some of the specialty products that they make. And this year we have tied that Ardent Mills program to our Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes program and to the carbon emission reduction generation that we're able to do through sustainable nitrogen outcomes so, it helps three different pieces of the supply chain meet carbon emission reduction goals by those acres participating in both Ardent Mills, paying them for the data collection and Ardent Mills and multiple supply chain players helping to pay for the carbon outcomes associated with some of the practice changes growers are doing.

Tom Daniel:

So let me get this right. I hear two different programs in what you just described. One, I think it's what we would call a measurement program, where a grower is just providing information about how he grew his crop, his field story as we would call it. That data's gathered and pulled together and then Ardent Mills provides a payment to the grower for supplying that data. And then what I also heard was an actual carbon credit or a GHG reduction. Driven, I'm assuming by nitrogen reduction as you said, and I get the impression that in sustainability today, there are downstream partners that this is important to them, and they are actually looking at this to make claims on some of the products they produce. 

Sally Flis:

Some of it's to make claims on products, Tom, some of it's just companies up and down the supply chain have made claims for how much they're going to reduce their Scope 1, 2, and 3 footprints if they're going to do net-zero. It combines both the want to label a product differently and the want to talk about those larger goals that they've stated publicly that a lot of them have 2025, 2030, 2050 deadlines on meeting the announcements that they've made. 

Tom Daniel:

The Ardent Mills project's exciting for me in a lot of ways because it's been what I would describe as a legacy project. It's something, it's someone we've worked with for years and they continue to grow the amount of acres that they want to include in the program. But a new project that you brought on board this year through a lot of work was the new Bunge Project. That's two locations, it's located around their soybean crush facility in Council Bluff, Iowa and also their crush facility around the Decatur, Indiana location. 

And what really excites me about these two locations and these two projects is we're now seeing the soy oil business as it relates to biofuels and some of those type things. We're looking at different ways for measurement and we're looking at opportunities for growers. A lot of times we talk about nitrogen reduction, which is around corn or canola or cotton. But in this situation it's the soybean crop which has not had a lot of opportunities to participate in different programs. I know you're excited about the project, can you give us a brief background of how that project came together and where you see it expanding to?

Sally Flis:

Tom, I am excited about the Bunge program because it lets us get at two things that we haven't been able to traditionally include in our sustainability and carbon programs. Soybeans or oil seeds like you mentioned, and existing practices in the field. So, one of the biggest things, and Tom you'll remember these conversations too, that we heard in 2021 when we started this carbon journey and sustainable journey as a team was, how come we're not going to pay growers for the good practices they're already doing? So, one of the things we're doing in the Bunge program is actually paying growers that are already doing no-till, already doing cover crops for maintaining those crops in the field, collecting that data and then calculating things like the carbon intensity score, which is then used like you say in that oil side, to calculate what is the lower carbon footprint of oils that are going into biofuels. 

We also are learning a lot through this process about what are the new practice opportunities on the ground to continue to drive that carbon intensity score down and have a lower carbon biofuel available in the marketplace, and we're learning some surprising things. Some areas that we thought were going to be pretty high adoption of practices like no-till and cover crop because of other water quality or sustainable pressures that they've had, don't have the level of implementation that we thought. So we're seeing, even though we've heard for so long that people want to see rewards for good practices happening in the field, we're actually seeing a bigger response than we expected in growers wanting to implement new practices around no-till and cover crops, which is super exciting because as we had the discussions in the past with growers and crop consultants about the new practice of cover crops or no-till, everybody told us everybody's already doing it, we don't need to pay for that.

How are we going to pay growers for what they're already doing? So, it's been as all of our projects have been, Tom, an interesting learning experience to really find out what's going in the field. And that goes back to that measurement piece around the Ardent Mills thing. We really want to design all these programs that we bring to the field from an aspect of what is really needed? Like we always talk about, what is that real resource concern for the grower, for the field, for the environment, so that we're not bringing programs in front of growers and crop consultants to sign up for things that don't make any sense for them. 

Tom Daniel:

Sally, one of the key things that I picked up on though in what you just said, we have never had a program in the past that we could pay a progressive grower who's implemented new practices on the field such as cover crop or no-till. We've never had a program that once he's done it that we could give him credit for it or find him a revenue for that. And what I'm hearing now is, is that because of the way you're measuring carbon intensity and working with the grower, there are opportunities for the grower today then to participate in this fuel discussion and receive a payment for continuing those farmer practices forward. 

In other words, he's continuing cover crop, he's continuing in no-till, he's continuing those practices on the farm so, to me that is a huge progression to where we've been in the past and you pointed out that we were in areas of the country, we thought cover crops were fully running wide open no-till was considered practice. And we know today that from some of our grower meetings we've had that there's areas of the country for different reasons that either no-till or cover crop have not been adopted and there's multiple opportunities for us to help growers get an opportunity for new payments on the acre. Now, this is a privately funded program, Sally, so from your perspective, are there other opportunities a grower might look at because this is privately funded versus going directly to some other sources of revenue?

Sally Flis:

For sure. There are the NRCS program payments. So, it's an order of operations thing for us, that as long as they sign up for our program first they can then sign up for funding through NRCS EQIP programs like they would regularly sign up for cover crops or nitrogen management or tillage changes. They could also participate as more and more of the climate-smart commodity programs get on the ground, they could sign up for those programs at the same time because as you said, we can bring more value to the acre as we bring private dollars and public dollars to the same acre. And one thing that makes what we're paying for a little bit more unique versus either an EQIP program or those climate-smart commodity programs is, those two programs are still largely paying for specific practice implementation. It's more of a pay for practice approach. 

EQIP for sure is a pay for practice approach. In our program, we're really paying the grower for how much change they make in that carbon intensity score or how much carbon they're potentially sequestering in the ground. So, we're really trying to get all of our programs to the point where we're paying for tons or pounds of outcome and not simply for this practice when on the landscape. So Tom, what are some of the other things you've heard as you guys have had some of these grower meetings, good or bad about either the Ardent Mills or the Bunge program in the field?

Tom Daniel:

Well, the Ardent Mills projects have just been very positive. I haven't heard anyone comment anything around any negatives on those. In fact, I think you even know, we've had just great participation so far in the 2024 signups for Ardent Mills. Especially the ones where we have used the Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes program as part of that overall Ardent Mills offer. So, we're seeing areas of the country that typically have not signed up for programs like this, or starting to sign up because the payments are good payments, but also the data lift is not as strenuous as it can be for some other programs. 

So, we're seeing growers that are engaged in these. I keep hearing from everybody, Sally, is that these are one-year programs and people like that. They don't like these long-term agreements and they prefer to have these one-year agreements around the crops that are growing in the field. So, I think that's one of the main advantages, and I'm going to go back and just restate what you said. The idea that a grower in the Bunge Project, for instance, could also get an EQIP or other government-based programs in addition to a payment from a private company like Bunge through a practice change. Those have been very positive. Now, I want to stress it one more time though, there is an order of signup that has to be maintained in there, right Sally? And if you would state that one more time just so it's clear.

Sally Flis:

So, they have to sign up with us first and then sign up for the other programs after that. That really is not because the government or outside funding that isn't private funding won't let them sign up for us afterwards, it's because we need to show as we verify carbon credits that our program was the program that caused the grower to make that practice change. So, we've got to have our program as the first program they're signing up for and then we can help growers find other opportunities to bring more value back to that acre. 

Tom Daniel:

With that said, the biggest things I'm hearing from growers is the opportunity to layer in multiple programs on a single acre, larger revenue opportunities. I had a grower in the Decatur, Indiana area, told me the other day that with the EQIP program in his geography and the Bunge Project that if he implemented new cover crop and new no-till, he could get $75 an acre, that's a big number. There's opportunities there for a grower to take a look at purchasing drill equipment to plant cover crop now and implementing those. And of course he gets to continue that project forward as he maintains those products in the field. 

He may not be new practice, but he'll be a legacy grower that continues to gain some of those payments if he re-enrolls those fields each year in that type project. So, to me, those are the big positives and I want to stress too, Sally, we have a customer success team within Nutrien today that is there to assist the grower every day in making sure his data gets pulled in and that is correct in the system so that it can be validated through the system. So, he's not out there on his own doing it. He's got the customer success team from our sustainable ag group that's more than willing to help him and get him through that process. So Sally, any follow-up questions or thoughts on either of these two projects moving forward?

Sally Flis:

No, but I would like to mention, in 2021 we started all these programs with the intent to achieve a verified carbon credit. I am very excited and relieved to announce that we did achieve getting Scope 1 carbon offsets verified off of 2021 enrolled acres last month. Those are officially posted to the Climate Action Reserves Registry and available for purchase should anyone want to offset some of their own emissions with the credits that we were able to achieve. And so that really represents that we are able to start at the beginning with the practices that we think work best for that grower in the field, all the way through data collection, all the way through verification and validation, and now we've got these credits available for somebody to really use, that wants to have agriculture as a part of the offsets that they're using in their accounting. 

Tom Daniel:

Well, Sally, I've looked in every drawer, I thought I had a party hat and one of those blow horns that I was going to blow into the mic to celebrate, because I know that has been a huge process, a huge process. So, I just wanted to let you know congratulations because your team has worked extremely hard on that, and as far as I know, we're the first ag retail company to achieve that goal. 

Sally Flis:

We are. 

Dusty Weis:

I certainly didn't expect to have any late breaking news in the middle of our podcast recording here, but as we used to say in the news business there, Sally, you really buried the lead on this one, but congratulations, that's exciting to hear. And of course, these sorts of strategic alliances that you've built with companies like Ardent Mills and Bunge there, part of Nutrien Ag Solutions' broader sustainability goals and the person who helps drive that long range plan for the company is Matt Marshall, the vice president of sustainable Ag and Retail Strategy. We're going to get to meet Matt talk a little bit more about some of the long horizon plans for Nutrien Ag Solutions and its sustainability programs. That's coming up in a moment here on the FARMSMART Podcast. 

This is the FARMSMART Podcast presented by Nutrien Ag Solutions. I'm Dusty Weiss, along with Tom Daniel and Sally Flis, and we're joined now by Matt Marshall, Vice President of Sustainable Ag and Retail Strategy at Nutrien Ag Solutions. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today.

Matt Marshall:

Hi Dusty, thanks for having me. 

Dusty Weis:

So Matt, you moved from your role of VP of Strategy to your current role of VP of Sustainable Ag and Retail Strategy about a year ago. We love that we're going to get to talk to you today because it enables us to look at sustainability from more of that strategic perspective here, but what about the opportunity enticed you to want to lead this department in building further opportunities and adoption of sustainable crop production practices? 

Matt Marshall:

Yeah, I know that's a great question Dusty. I'm relatively new to the role, I stepped in the tail end of 2022. I've been with Nutrien for about 12 years working in around strategy and business development type positions. Sustainability, as you might know and be aware is a really integral part of our strategy as Nutrien. When we look across the broader business, there's obviously plenty of opportunities for us to enact change and drive improvements and demonstrate to our various stakeholders that we're in a really great position to drive impact and improvements around that whole sustainability conversation. Being such an integral part of our strategy, I was involved in some of the early onset work that we had done in the retail business, namely around our first iterations of our carbon program, which have evolved quite a bit since the early days about two years ago. 

I had the opportunity to work with Sally and Tom even though I wasn't necessarily in the role that I'm in now, around how those programs were initially shaped and how we were thinking about the strategy. So, there's a real natural connection there from my prior role that I was in at the Nutrien level, and seeing all the opportunities that we had within our retail business and really our position in the value chain to really support our grower customers and find an opportunity to create some real value more through a strategic and a business lense around, what a focus on sustainability can mean to Nutrien Ag Solutions.

Dusty Weis:

And of course, this time of transition that's been taking place in sustainability at Nutrien Ag Solutions, it goes beyond just your tenure there because in the spring we rolled out a new portfolio brand titled FARMSMART. The primary purpose here is better organizing our program offerings and increasing the digestibility of our messaging in this complex and convoluted market. Can you elaborate just a little bit on how you see the pillars of the brand, practices, proof and profit and how those enable us to break down some of those complexities in the sustainability world? 

Matt Marshall:

Yeah, I mean, as you pointed out, we felt that there was a need to try and drive some simplicity around this whole sustainability conversation. Obviously, there is a little bit of confusion, a lot of competing value propositions and offerings in the market, and we want to try and cut through that with something that was recognizable, so a brand to facilitate that. But also, building recognition of what that brand represents. When a grower sees that, and even our own field folks, they see that brand and they see value, they see something that's focused on sustainability and something that's frankly worth their time. When we look across these three different pillars, practices, obviously that's where a lot of the focus is and where we're kind of originating the focus on specific practices that drive measurable improvements that can be around soil health, GSG emission reductions, improvement in water use and water quality, even things like biodiversity. 

And so, there's a whole host of different things that we can focus on, on the practice side, the proof side is obviously we need to provide the data and supporting evidence that we're actually implementing these practices and that we're getting the results and impact that we're expecting. So that's another really important pillar, and then the profit side, this needs to make economic sense for growers. There's a dollars and cents decision there would be for any decision or input decision that a grower's making. And this is no different in the sustainability conversation.

So, we really want to try and map any of the programs that we're developing, both what we have in the market today, but future iterations as we develop that and extract learnings from the work we're doing and iterate on the programming, but all fitting under that same construct so that year over year, season over season, we're not having to reintroduce a new framework, a new way of thinking about sustainability, and it's again, something recognizable that growers can gravitate towards and be comfortable that by participating in a FARMSMART program that it's, as I said, worth their time and there's an actual economic benefit in participating. 

Dusty Weis:

We mentioned earlier that you bring a strategic perspective to this here and FARMSMART, it really gives you an umbrella to cover all of these activities that Nutrien Ag Solutions had going on, and it was all just referred to as this piece of the sustainability plan or that piece of the sustainability plan. How does having that overarching FARMSMART name attached to it really help drive and motivate the team and all the different teams that you have working on this to move in one uniform direction? 

Matt Marshall:

As I mentioned before, this whole space is inherently complex and I think more complex than it needs to be, and although the underpinnings of data collection and the agronomy that's kind of integrated into supporting the integration of these different practices, that's all inherently complex, but the way in which we're presenting these programs, I think there's a real opportunity to streamline that and that also, as I mentioned, is something that's important internally. We're a very large organization, we've got a network that spans all the major cropping area in North America, and we need to be able to communicate clearly to our folks that are supporting our growers and our crop consultant staff as a means of being a conduit into communicating what our program benefits are and what the requirements are of participating. 

Again, this brand gives us that flexibility to work with any variety of different program designs and also the flexibility that we know this space is going to change, but we don't want to create additional confusion every time we have to evolve the program offering, and this brand gives us that flexibility to do that along with the recognition that, hey, I've participated in a FARMSMART program before and this is worth my time and I expect it'll continue to be worth my time, and again, that brand helps to facilitate that.

Sally Flis:

Matt, in the opening segment of the podcast, Tom and I went back and reflected on, gave some updates on our partnerships with Ardent Mills and Bunge in the field, and in addition to Ardent Mills and Bunge, you've interacted with at conferences or in individual meetings, all different stakeholders, up and down the supply chains, other food companies, other processors, banks, finance. What's the thing that you hear from them the most about what they want from sustainable ag reporting or outcomes? And then what do you think is the biggest challenge to being able to scale to meet some of these goals that are coming up seven to 10 years now for some of these companies? 

Matt Marshall:

I think it is interesting, and I think the role that Nutrien Ag Solutions can play in helping connect the value chain has been really eye-opening, quite frankly from where I'm sitting, and a real opportunity for us to draw together more of those value chain participants and that's reflected of being able to work in partnership with Bunge, who is a great partner of ours and someone that we plan to continue to grow our efforts with, but also connecting further down the value chain to those different CPGs, even the fuel processors and others, the livestock sectors. And so this conversation around sustainability and the focus around sustainability is the real catalyst around driving some of that connectivity. It has been also interesting to hear the diversity of different opinions and thoughts around what sustainability means to these organizations and then also where they think they can actually influence and make impact and drive towards objectives. 

Many of them have very ambitious objectives, net-zero ambition, other sustainability linked commitments, and we feel that we're in a very unique position to help support those outcomes on the farm and in field where we obviously have that position in the value chain to help support that. So, that diversity of opinion and diversity of commitments though is also problematic because if we're not looking for consistent outcomes, we're not working to drive consistent process, we're not even looking at consistent ways of measuring those outcomes, it can be quite challenging. So, I think even one of the major barriers to scale at this stage is just a lack of consistency around what the sector is looking for, the methodologies of how we're actually going to quantify that, and then ensuring that we've got the right tools and processes in place to ensure that we have the ability to collect and aggregate what is a significant amount of information and data, and be able to actually credibly report against that for a variety of different purposes.

Nutrien's a publicly traded company, we have different reporting requirements and there's going to be more emphasis on sustainability or environmental social and governance type reporting, and we need to adhere to that in the same way that many other companies are required to as well and will be increasingly so. So, I think there's huge potential there. We really view ourselves as a facilitator of this and an opportunity for us to extract that value from the downstream channel and pull that towards our customers in a way that leverages more of our core competencies and the core aspects of our business. 

Sally Flis:

Matt, you mentioned the solution aspect of the work that we do in these programs with our growers and to design solutions that are going to get to some of the metrics and outcomes that downstream wants to see as well. What are some of the solutions that you've encountered across the programs that you're probably most excited about or think we have the most ability to drive further practice change and impact in the field with? 

Matt Marshall:

Yeah, I think when we look across what we offer today within Nutrien Ag Solutions, the portfolio of products that we have is quite expansive, but when we look at those products that actually drive sustainability benefits in addition to what you'd expect in terms of agronomic performance, yield improvements, there's an exciting connection there, particularly with our proprietary products portfolio. So our Loveland brand products, in that whole nutritional shelf of products, which is a mix of different liquid nutritionals and even biological products as well that are extremely well suited to drive the outcomes that we're seeking to deliver in terms of our sustainability programming around nutrient use, efficiency, even knock on effects to water equality. 

We've got products like nitrification inhibitors and other nitrogen efficiency products that are really well suited to be integrated into our programming and drive the outcomes, like you said there, Sally as well. If we look into the upstream portion of Nutrien's business, we've got products like ESN, which is a controlled release product, that's been in the market for many, many years now, but there's a really nice linkage there around nitrogen management opportunities. But like I said, I think the whole connectivity to our proprietary portfolio is very exciting and another prong of value in which those products can deliver in a way that's integrated with the value that they're already positioned to create in terms of those yield improvements and economic benefit that growers stand to generate through their use.

Sally Flis:

Matt, in the positions you've had with Nutrien and our legacy companies, you've been exposed really across the whole spectrum of what we do from manufacturing and mining all the way through what we're doing in the field now with ag retail. So, when you think about the things that we're doing in the field versus the environmental management or changes in the mining and product manufacturing side of things, especially when we think about our base, N,P and K products, what are some of the changes that are being made in that manufacturing product side for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that kind of come alongside what we're doing in the field with growers to use proprietary products to be more efficient on every acre that we're touching? 

Matt Marshall:

That's a great question, Sally. I think when we look at the broader Nutrien, our business model is unique. We are an integrated Ag company, and so we have our Ag inputs retail business, which is Nutrien Ag Solutions. And then of course we've got the upstream manufacturing production of NPK Fertilizers, and this is really a nitrogen story for the most part when we think about emissions particularly, obviously the production of nitrogen is inherently high emitting, and the use of nitrogen is high emitting as well. So, we're actually operating across two of the most impacted areas for emissions as it relates to crop production. That also gives us a unique opportunity to drive impact across those two areas. We also have the opportunity to bolt on the upstream input side of things. So, an example of that and where we have lots of opportunity is around low carbon fertilizers. 

So, like low carbon nitrogen is an example. We actually have about a million tons of capacity today that we're producing in our Alberta, Redwater facility and also at our Geismar, Louisiana facility. And so, by combining low carbon fertilizer or nitrogen with practices that we can implement on the farm that also drive emissions improvement, we have a ending commodity or crop commodity that actually has a lower carbon intensity tied to that, and we believe that there's actually real inherent value and differentiation around those types of commodities going forward and that will only continue to grow, both in terms of the transparency around measurement of that carbon intensity, but also be in a position to drive improvements on that.

Dusty Weis:

And Matt, from that industry-wide perspective, Sally broke the news earlier in the program about the officially verified carbon credit, which is huge news. How does that raise the profile of Nutrien Ag Solutions and its sustainability efforts from an industry perspective? 

Matt Marshall:

That's an exciting milestone for us. I know Sally has obviously been intimately involved in that and really pivotal in terms of driving that to successful outcome there. That was work that initiated roughly two years ago, and we've been on a long journey trying to figure out how we actually get to that endpoint. We've always positioned ourselves as having an end-to-end offering. We start with the solution or the practices that we're looking at actually implementing on the acre, we're trying to collect the information and the proof around how those practices have been implemented, and then we're pushing that into an external verifier to actually have an external set of eyes that's verifying both the practice, but also the data and how that's actually been implemented. 

And to prove we can actually run an end-to-end process from practice implementation to creating a measurable unit of improvement, in this case around GHG emissions with a very credible organization or standard body like the Climate Action Reserve or CAR, which is the organization that these credits are under, with an arm's length verifier who's verified the process that we've went through and confirmed that we've done what we've needed to do to create those credits is very exciting. It also creates us an opportunity to now engage with that downstream channel we mentioned to say, hey listen, we can create an attribute in which it's validated, it's confirmed, and that helps us to create more opportunities as we look to try and deepen that value pool for growers that we have the opportunity to pull closer to our customers.

The nature of carbon credits, I know there's been a lot of volatility in that market, and so we are approaching that space with caution, but we do believe there's opportunities to monetize those units. And over time, the whole sector is looking for emission reductions and improvements within the value chain. And we see greater opportunities to create more of those outcomes that are more of that inset nature where we're creating improvements within the value chain. We're not looking to sell that to an airline or some external sector. We believe that over time these outcomes are going to be consumed within the value chain, and that's really important. Important for Nutrien, but also important for those partners that Sally had mentioned earlier as well. 

Sally Flis:

So Matt, this is usually the hardest question we ask on the podcast. If there were one thing that you could tell retail employees and partners in the field about why Nutrien Ag Solutions is so involved in sustainable ag, what would that one thing be? 

Matt Marshall:

That is a challenging question. I feel like there's many things, but I think we really want to instill in our grower customers, in the partners that we're working with today and others that we're trying to attract and work with us. We are very uniquely positioned. I think even if we look across our global business too, I think that's a really interesting opportunity for us as well, given our global reach and our network and the ability to connect with large multinational organizations that have global aspirations and touch very large geography in the same way that we do, combined with things like our integrated business model, as I mentioned earlier, around being able to tackle both the input side of the equation, but also what happens on the acre. 

And then just leveraging our network and the relationships that we have with our customers and the opportunity to integrate the sustainability conversation into what we're already doing for our customers today as the opportunity. So, I'm really excited about the work we're doing. We're on a journey here, we've got a lot of work yet to do, but I feel really confident in the team that we have, and I think we can be confident and proud of the progress that we've made to date, but certainly more to do.

Dusty Weis:

Well, Matt, it's certainly an eye-opening conversation for us, just hearing about all of the different balls that you have to keep up in the air in your role and a great reminder of what the view is from 30,000 feet here as we spend a lot of the time boots on the ground in individual farm fields as well. But we thank you for sharing the perspective and getting us up to speed on all the updates. Matt Marshall, Vice President of Sustainable Ag and Retail Strategy at Nutrien Ag Solutions. Thank you so much for joining us on the FARMSMART podcast. 

Matt Marshall:

Thank you, Dusty. Thanks, Sally. 

Dusty Weis:

That is going to conclude this edition of the FARMSMART Podcast. New episodes arrive every month, so make sure you follow the FARMSMART podcast in your favorite app and visit NutrienAgSolutions.com/FARMSMART to learn more. The FARMSMART podcast is brought to you by Nutrien Ag Solutions. Our executive producer is Connor Erwin with editing on this episode by Matthew Covarrubias and Will Henry, and the FARMSMART Podcast is produced by Podcamp Media. Branded podcast production for businesses podcampmedia.com. I'm Dusty Weiss for Nutrien Ag Solutions. Thanks for listening.