Unilever has launched its first regenerative agriculture project in the UK, working with farms that grow mustard seeds and mint leaves for use in Colman’s products.
The project will initially trial the application of regenerative agriculture practices across mustard and mint farms around Norwich and Peterborough over four-years, including mustard farms which have supplied Colman’s products for over 200 years, with the first crop of the programme due to be sown in March.
The project brings together Unilever and two farming cooperatives, the English Mustard Growers and Norfolk Mint Growers, with a group of technical and academic partners including Farmacy and NIAB. It is designed to address the unique challenges and needs of these crops and landscapes and will look at practices including the use of low carbon fertiliser, crop nutrition strategies, planting of cover and companion crops to reduce pesticides use, new digital water irrigation scheduling systems and reduced cultivation.
Andre Burger, Unilever’s head of nutrition for the UK & Ireland, said, “Healthy soil should matter to all food businesses and as the climate crisis continues to impact the natural world, we need to not just protect but to help regenerate the soil and farmland used to grow the crops and ingredients we enjoy every day. Colman’s is a British condiment staple and our new regenerative agriculture project will help to ensure the sustainable supply and future of the delicious ingredients and farms that put the big flavour into our products.”
Mustard grower Michael Sly commented, “As with all farmers, we are facing the challenges of climate change directly on our land. Alongside our English Mustard Growers Group, we’re on the journey with Unilever and NIAB to integrate regenerative agriculture practices that include strong measurement processes, to improve our yield, improve the soil health, and maintain the flavour of a fantastic product alongside that.”
Mint grower David Bond added, “To increase our resilience and continue to produce high quality products, we need to work with our climate, which means adapting our practices. This new project with Unilever will enable us to implement regenerative agriculture practices on a wider scale, together with more measurement and analysis from our partnership with NIAB, so we can continue to learn and improve for the future.”
The project follows other global initiatives from the company, including growing ingredients for Hellmann’s and Knorr products in the United States, France, Spain, Argentina and Italy, and forms part of Unilever’s target to invest in regenerative agriculture practices on 1.5 million hectares of land and forests by 2030.