Irish Brewery, Guinness, is launching a new agricultural program with the goal of making their iconic stouts more sustainable.
Soil management experts, crop production experts, and suppliers are all on board, including Boortmalt, Glanbia, and Comex McKinnon. The initiative will reduce the carbon emissions of its barley production, which is a key ingredient in each black and white pint. And the regenerative agriculture project has five key goals, including:
- Improving soil health and its carbon sequestration potential.
- Enhance biodiversity, or the natural soil fertilization, nutrient recycling, erosion control, and crop/tree pollination that keeps the ecosystem healthy.
- Use less synthetic fertilizers, which can hurt the environment by killing beneficial bacteria in soil or contaminating the nearby plant life and water supply that people and animals eat and drink.
- Improve overall water quality, which will make for a healthier environment and healthier crops.
- Enhance farmer livelihoods, which will lead to a better quality of life and boost the economy.
This program is intended to expand to more farms in Ireland and beyond.
"We will openly share the results from the pilot program so that other farms can learn and adopt practices that have demonstrated the highest potential impact from an environmental and farm profitability standpoint. Like the Irish farming community, we are 'all in' for the long haul – for our people, products, partners, and planet. We will never settle in pursuit of a more sustainable future," said John Kennedy.
