AGCO Finance Launches Campaign to Address Climate Change and Sustainability

AGCO Finance, a provider of financing solutions for agricultural equipment, launched its Climate Journey Campaign, which is part of the firm’s ongoing focus on sustainability, including its goal to grow regenerative solutions to 25% of its annual business.

The initiatives of the campaign are focused on creating a sustainable legacy for future generations, with the goal of embedding more sustainable thinking within the company and its employees. Published content from the campaign will include white papers, blogs and video interviews that will provide insight into AGCO Finance’s sustainability efforts and research findings.

“For over 30 years, we have worked to support farmers. We believe that the Climate Journey Campaign’s strength lies in its inclusivity and that together we can achieve a lasting impact,” Jean-Sebastian Leite, head of sustainable finance at AGCO Finance, said. “We are dedicated to offering products and services to our clients that will help ease their transition to a more sustainable way of farming.”

AGCO Finance’s Climate Journey Campaign is part of its three-pillar sustainability framework.

The first pillar consists of commercial programs aimed at farmers and includes a €50 million ($55.56 million) fund that was launched in July 2021 and is dedicated to offering farmers pursuing sustainable farming practices tailored interest rates on their loans.

The second pillar is focused on stakeholder engagement and includes partnerships with governments and institutions that have pledged support for climate action under the 2021 Glasgow Financial Alliance on Net Zero (GFANZ). As part of this pillar, the Rabobank Group, AGCO Finance’s parent company, committed to net-zero and has commenced steps to invest in improved soil health and food systems transformation.

The third and final pillar is aimed at educating AGCO Finance’s own employees to become climate ambassadors in order to better serve clients through learning and development.

One of the first published works from the campaign is a white paper, “Farming for a Better Future,” which outlines the importance of acting now, what role agriculture can play in the fight against climate change and what opportunities exist for farmers. As the campaign progresses, the firm will continue to explore new ways to help farmers benefit from potential revenue streams such as carbon credits while also helping them become more resilient to increasingly more frequent adverse weather events.

“Within the communities we operate, we want to better understand our environmental and social impacts and design solutions to address them,” Louisa Parker-Smith, director of global sustainability at AGCO, said. “Placing farmers at the center of our conversation, we embrace the challenge of this generation: feeding the growing world populations while mitigating climate change.”