Yara North America: Celebrating 75 Years

The President proposes historic investments to spur new job creation and opportunities in rural America; help restore America’s advantage in agriculture; leverage all of USDA’s expertise to address climate change; and support a stronger nutrition safety net. 

Yara, a leader in crop nutrition solutions, is celebrating a significant milestone in 2021 - 75 years in North America committed to advancing the agriculture industry and its farmers. For the past 75 years, Yara has supported farmers in producing better, healthier crops through nutrition fertilizers, launching innovative industrial products and creating forward-thinking digital farming tools. 

From their arrival in North America in 1946 until today, Yara’s main focus has remained the same: be the crop nutrition company of the future by investing in research and development for different crop nutrition solutions. In addition, Yara is simultaneously working to address global challenges like food shortages, limited farm land and air pollution through their commitment to responsibly feeding the world and protecting the planet. 

“Since 1946, Yara North America has been committed to being the crop nutrition company of the future, and we’re extremely proud of all of the significant strides that we’ve made within the industry. In 1946 our export of fertilizer to the US helped rebuild a war-torn Norway as well as created an off-take market for US crops on the return. Being a core contributor to the food value chain has always been our DNA,” said Magnus Ankarstrand, President of Yara North America. “We’ve continued to invest in research and development for different crop nutrition solutions, sought ideas for creating new digital tools to improve practices, and we look forward to continuing to build and share our knowledge for the betterment of our industry and world.” 

Over the past two years, Yara and various partners have established three in Auburn, AL, Modesto, CA, and Saskatoon to provide a space for research on field-scale soil fertility and crop nutrient management. By utilizing large, multi-acre plots to gather many layers of data on every aspect of the cropping system, Yara has been able to explore, refine and share their knowledge among the industry in order to make advances in crop nutrition. 

In 2018, Yara launched a patented micronutrient coating technology, which leverages the granular fertilizer to evenly and efficiently distribute essential micronutrients to growing crops, by delivering complete nutrition without complexity and decreasing granular fertilizer dust by over 99%. This revolutionary, proprietary oil-based coating allows farmers to apply a customized blend of micronutrients. The coating allows for a consistent and even distribution leading crops to have increased feeding sites and nutrient uptake. Additionally, the company also launched which offers crops a unique granular, homogenous nitrogen and sulfate sulfur fertilizer that has proven increased effectiveness over blends and delivers the ideal ratios of N:S together in one prill for optimal crop nutrition efficiencies and improved handling. 

While the last 75 years have been full of significant industry strides, Yara looks forward to expanding its offering and support for farming with a few more product solutions in the pipeline - starting with the upcoming launch of a remote crop monitoring app that monitors crops using satellite images. The company also aims to reduce its carbon footprint to zero by 2050 through their nitrate fertilizers, which are among the lowest in the world. Not only that, but in order to achieve climate change goals for agriculture and food supply, Yara has been actively lowering CO2 emissions in the manufacturing process and educating farmers to improve nutrient use efficiencies.