In Canada, Agrisoma Biosciences Inc. and Helsinki, Finland biorefinery giant UPM signed a long-term supply agreement to expand the world’s only oilseed crop, Carinata. Under the deal, the companies will grow Carinata oilseed crops with third-party farmers in Uruguay and Brazil to produce renewable fuels in South America.
The Agrisoma-UPM agreement is a global first, where a non-food sustainable oilseed can develop into a second, low indirect land use change crop. Commercial production of Carinata has been seeded as a second crop during the winter growing season, a time when major commodity crops do not grow.
Carinata produced under these second cropping procedures provides finished fuels with a greenhouse gas reduction of more than 75 percent over fossil fuels. Agrisoma believes that as these strategies expand on a broader scale, GHG reductions of more than 100 percent are possible, providing carbon negative fuels that are price competitive with fossil fuels.