Climate & Nature-program

In 2015, Unibake's owner, Swedish Lantmännen Group, together with their farmer owners, decided to take the first steps towards transforming the way they grow grain for flour. They named the program “Climate & Nature”. The program is based on up-to-date cultivation methods including 100% renewable fuel on farms, climate-smart fertilizers, precision farming based on GPS-technology, and biodiversity efforts such as skylark plots (unsown plots in the fields where skylarks can land to find food) and flower zones. 

As the first expansion to a foreign market, the program was launched in Finland in 2021 starting with rye cultivation. It was a joint initiative between four local business units within the Lantmännen cooperative: Lantmännen Agro, Lantmännen Cerealia Finland, Unibake Finland and Vaasan, a Unibake company. 

“We wanted to start with rye in Finland as rye bread is our national food. As the baker of the most popular rye bread in Finland, we want to contribute to a bright future for rye farming,” says Tuomas Mantere, Managing Director Vaasan & COO Lantmännen Unibake Fresh for Finland, Baltics, and Denmark. 

“Our first harvest with the new program was in 2022 which was quite small because of a limited number of farmers and because rye suffered severe winter damages in the first cultivation year. But the second harvest in 2023 was excellent. 95 farmers turned in approximately 15,500 tons of rye. That was more than expected, and it more than covered what we needed for our Vaasan branded products in Finland.”

For Unibake Finland’s production of rye bread, approximately 60% of the CO2 emissions come from farming, and 40% come from baking and distributing the bread products. 

“With the program, we can reduce the climate impact where it matters the most – on the farms. With the program activities, we can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions up to 15% compared to average rye farming in Finland. And at the same time, we have supported biodiversity in the farmland,” says Tuomas Mantere.

Tailored for Finnish farming

Battling climate change is one of the most important tasks of our time. But it is equally important to focus on biodiversity.

“The climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are interconnected. On farms the biodiversity crisis is very noticeable, and farmers are concerned. They can see from year to year how birds and insects are disappearing. That is also why we have listened to farmers when we adjusted some of the program measures for Finland conditions and Finnish farming. The farmers acknowledge the importance of the activities supporting biodiversity and want to contribute to a more sustainable farming practice.” 

In the coming years, the ambition for Finland is to expand the Climate & Nature-program to other crops.

“Lantmännen Unibake has committed to the Science Based Targets initiative. The Climate & Nature-program plays an important role in meeting those targets. By 2030, we must reduce absolute Scope 3 GHG emissions by 30% from a 2019 baseline. To reach those objectives, we need to look at all crops and not just rye,” says Tuomas Mantere.

On a company level, Lantmännen Unibake will look to extend the partnership with Lantmännen on eco-friendlier flower beyond Sweden and Finland in a near future. 

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