Investment reports: Interview with CEO Alzbeta Klein
Having worked across finance, climate, and development, including at the IFC, you later chose to specialize in agriculture and fertilizers. Was there a defining moment or key insight that shaped that decision?
I spent a lot of time financing agribusiness companies in emerging markets, so I learnt a lot about how food is grown and invested in. At the IFC, I became Director of Agribusiness, responsible for agriculture and then the Director for Climate Business, which opened up a different avenue of thought. It's not enough to produce food; we have to do it sustainably.
Out of the blue, a headhunter offered this unique opportunity to help solve the dilemma: how do we feed all 10 billion of us who will be here by 2050, and how do we do it sustainably? No one has yet figured this out. It was a calling.
Why do you think the widening mismatch between projected population growth and our current pace of food production has not garnered broader attention?
My hypothesis is that in developed countries, we’ve forgotten the link between nature, how food is grown, and how it gets on our plate; what it takes to get an avocado for our toast or bread for our breakfast.
That's why we are in the situation we are, because we look for easy solutions. The problem is that there is no simple solution to our climate issues; it's a complex endeavour. My industry is a small piece of the puzzle, trying to move the needle, but it takes more than just us to figure it out.
When you consider the pressures on agriculture and fertilizers going into 2026, what feels truly new about the current cycle versus what is echoing past cycles?
The first COP to even acknowledge agriculture as a climate-relevant source of emissions was in 2017. Since then, agriculture has been increasing in prominence in declarations around the world. Another seminal moment happened in 2022, when Russia launched its attack on Ukraine. Russia accounts for about 25% of the global supply of plant nutrients, and with supply disruptions, many countries, especially in the developing world, suddenly realised: one, we do not have grains and oilseeds, and two, we do not have fertilisers. Fertiliser prices spiked because Russia and Belarus couldn't export the usual volumes, and many countries in the Global South couldn't get supplies. We worked closely with the United Nations and the Secretary General's office to ensure nutrients reached Africa, because farmers, especially small farmers, couldn’t afford the prices for fertiliser supplies to grow crops. It became a global issue and led to the first-ever UN Security Council hearing on fertilisers, something that had never happened before or since.
The majority of the calories we eat - about 70–80% - come from six countries: Canada, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Russia and Ukraine. That’s where most of the grains and oilseeds we eat are grown: wheat, corn, soy, sunflower seeds, processed soybeans, etc. These go into animal feed or human food. If you have a disruption in any of those six countries, you're going to see hunger. North Africa imports heavily from Russia and Ukraine via the Black Sea, so any disruption there means lower food availability. Plants don't distinguish between organic and mineral; nothing grows without nutrients. They need nitrogen, potash and phosphate just as we need carbs, fat and protein.
A steady food supply is not a given: we are highly vulnerable both to disruptions in exports from grains- and oilseeds-producing countries and to disruptions in countries producing plant nutrients. These moments over the last 10 years have brought agriculture to the forefront.
Plant nutrition is widely misunderstood, and you’ve even begun an educational series to address that. What’s the most important thing you want people to understand about the role fertilisers play in production and resilience?
First, plants need nutrients, which come from the soil. When a plant “eats” the nutrients in the soil — primarily nitrogen, potash, and phosphate (N, K and P) — the soil becomes depleted. When you grow corn, wheat, or avocados, the plants take nutrients from the soil, which end up in the plant or the fruit. If you don’t replenish what’s been taken out, the next year’s yield drops because there aren’t enough nutrients. The year after, it drops further. Eventually, you deplete the soil entirely and destroy its productivity. Soil is like a bank account: you withdraw cash, your balance goes down, and you must put nutrients back; it’s the same with crops.
Second, a plant doesn’t distinguish where a nutrient comes from. Whether it’s organic manure — poultry, cattle — or inorganic fertiliser produced in a factory or mined, the plant doesn’t care. It simply needs nitrogen, potash, phosphate, and other minerals like zinc and magnesium. This isn’t so different from humans. The potassium in bananas comes from potash — the “K” in NPK. It moves from the soil into the plant and then into you. It’s the same potassium your heart relies on to keep a regular rhythm; potassium is even used in pacemakers. We still haven’t found a way to feed the world without giving plants the nutrients they require. The challenge is to do that while causing the least possible environmental harm and staying within planetary boundaries. In places like the Netherlands or France, roughly 238 and 131 kg of nutrients are applied per hectare, respectively, producing 7-8 tons of grains and oilseeds per hectare, while in Africa, only 5–7 kg of fertilizer is applied, resulting in just 1–2 tons of grains per hectare. If you put nutrients in, you get more out — there’s no magic, it’s botany — but some areas apply far too much and others far too little, and that imbalance is exactly where both environmental risks and massive yield gaps emerge.
You’ve commented about the competing goals of sustainability and food security. To what extent can fertilisers realistically assist in bringing down emissions?
We are both a problem and a solution, but feeding the world and sustainability go hand in hand. Arable land is limited, and we don’t want to convert the Amazon or Congo forest into arable land, so we must grow more food on existing land, which requires nutrients. Plant nutrition has two issues: how we produce nutrients and how we use them. N, P, and K are the key nutrients: phosphate and potash are mined; nitrogen must be processed into ammonia using large amounts of energy. Renewables can produce “green ammonia,” but an entire Western Europe’s installed solar and wind capacity would barely power one ammonia plant, which is why most ammonia still uses gas. Decarbonisation means switching to renewables where possible or capturing carbon to make “blue ammonia.”
Once nitrogen is applied, plants use some and some runs off. This is where we can improve. Using the 4Rs — right place, right time, right fertiliser, right application — cuts emissions and pollution. Slow-release fertilisers, like long-acting vitamins in humans, also reduce run-off. The second part is application: digital agriculture and soil testing let farmers give plants exactly what they need, and many startups are pushing this forward.
You recently attended COP30 in Brazil, a country whose agricultural approach has drawn attention, as a kind of “poster child.” Which parts of its experience can realistically be replicated elsewhere?
Forty years ago, Brazil was not an agricultural superpower. It developed despite having acidic soils by applying nutrients and fertilisers in a specific, scientific way and started growing grains —corn, soy and others. What they now produce from previously poor soils is impressive, even with work still needed on deforestation. A few things can be replicated: public–private partnerships, with EMBRAPA socialising agronomic and tropical agriculture research and ensuring farmers use it; the role of BNDES and other banks willing to fund agriculture; and innovation, helped by farmers who are younger and more willing to consider new technologies.
Several barriers arise when applying this in Africa, South Asia or Southeast Asia, starting with farm size. Brazil’s farms are very large, making it easier to deploy technology, while in Africa, a typical farm is about one hectare. Southeast Asia looks more positive. Countries like Indonesia and Malaysia could follow Brazil by using public–private partnerships to socialise research, provide funding for farmers and introduce innovation.
We’re seeing a wave of innovation in AI, precision tech, low-emission ammonia and agri-startups. When you think about ready, scalable solutions that already work in practice, what comes to mind?
A couple of years ago, our board of directors mandated us to bring innovation to our universe of 500+ companies, so we started the Cultivate Challenge programme and currently have 25 startups in the association. We've run a series of competitions and picked themes, such as nutrient use efficiency (how efficiently a plant uses nutrients), circularity in nutrients and recycling, and better production of nitrogen with fewer emissions and less fossil fuel use. Most startups need other companies to help validate their products and someone to sell those products to.
They also need funding. While IFA is not-for-profit, we have banks on the platform — Rabobank, IFC, and working with EBRD — and all the large industry companies they can work with to bring new products to farmers. We also have several companies in IFA doing biologicals. If you apply a fertiliser and a biological product, you may get better uptake of nutrients by the plant. We see this as a very symbiotic relationship with our industry. We like to promote it and have a strong innovation agenda.
From your extensive background, are there lessons from other sectors, like tech or consumer goods, that the fertiliser industry could adopt to help scale sustainability and innovation faster?
The future of agriculture will be digital, and in 15–20 years, we're going to see much more precise “recipes” for fields becoming widespread. There are already companies doing soil sampling; scientist Keith Shepard from the UK recently won the IFA Norman Borlaug Award after designing a spectrometer you stick into a cup of soil, which tells you within moments the structure of the soil, its pH and all the minerals in it. Just like a blood test, then you know exactly what you need to put into it to grow your corn or wheat.
Normally, you’d take a soil sample, send it to a lab, wait two weeks and get the results. With precision approaches to agriculture, you won't waste seeds or nutrients. We have programmes with startups looking to aggregate field trials by scientists around the world. All these trials, instead of sitting in drawers, will be on a common platform, combined with AI, so that we can learn from each other how to grow food much more efficiently. The future of growing food is digital.
