President & Chief Executive Officer, Yara International
Holsether: Global food system needs to be less reliant on Russia
"We need to create a much more resilient food system less dependent on Russia." Svein Tore Holsether, CEO of Yara ...
About Svein Holsether
Svein Holsether, President and CEO of Yara International, discussed the company's second quarter 2026 results on a July 17 earnings call. He noted an increase in accidents during the quarter, stating that safety is something he takes "very seriously" and that the company has been working to emphasize its safety culture, including holding an annual safety day on April 28. Holsether said he was pleased to see improving safety numbers toward the end of the quarter and expressed hope that the negative trend could be reversed. On July 2, 2026, Holsether announced Yara's acquisition of the Gulf Coast ammonia production facility in Texas City for $1.3 billion, describing the plant as having an expected nameplate capacity of 1.3 million tons per year. He stated that the acquisition demonstrates Yara's execution of its strategy to diversify energy exposure and enhance competitiveness. During the Q&A, Holsether and other executives confirmed that there is currently no carbon capture on the plant and therefore no blue premium for its ammonia, though they noted future possibilities for stepwise decarbonization.
Transcript (6 segments)
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Zain0:01
Also noted that the global food production depends heavily on Russian fertilizer as well. It's been — CEO of a fertilizer company — joins us now from Oslo. Thank you so much for being with us. As I was just saying to our reporter, Anna Stewart there, and Russia's argument for wanting to end this deal is that they believe, or they've said that they believe, that this deal is inherently unfair because it limits Russia's ability to export their own food stuff, and export their own fertilizer. Regardless of whether or not one believes that, I mean obviously the U.S. is saying that Russia is simply using this grain deal as a weapon. Regardless of what you believe, just explain to us how, just walk us through what changes in terms of Russia's ability to export fertilizer from this point forward? What happens now?
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Svein Holsether0:55
Well Zain, what we see now is it's just another brutal reminder of how fragile the food system is and it's an additional burden to the Ukrainian people, to the Ukrainian farmers that have already lost significant arable land to produce food, they've been out there in the fields, some of them filled with mines to produce food. And now on top of it, they have the uncertainty of whether they're going to be able to sell the food that they produce. But when it comes to food exports and fertilizer exports from Russia, I can't say too much about the food part of this, because it's very difficult to interpret all the data. In our industry, in the fertilizer part of this, the main nutrient going into the new fertilizer, the exports out of Russia increased by 12% in 2022, compared to 2021, so fertilizer is finding its way out into the market. Fertilizer prices have come down to pre-war levels, and we see the announcement today, and again it just tells us that we need to create a much more resilient food system, less dependent on Russia.
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Zain2:17
Is there anything that we could have done to plan for this? We know that Russia is not a reliable partner when it comes to this grain deal, of course, there was a lot of speculation leading up to this moment that they would pull out, they've done it before. What could have been done to mitigate the impact of this, do you think?
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Svein Holsether2:38
When it comes to the global food system, a lot should have been done much earlier. And what we see now in terms of food security, because of the war against Ukraine, would have happened regardless, because of the climate impact to agriculture. Look at what is happening right now, heat waves in the U.S., heat waves in Europe, 52 degrees Celsius in China. We need to create a system that fits the farmers in the center. What we need now is to incentivize farmers, we need a global equivalent of the Inflation Reduction Act for the farmers, to reduce emissions of farming, and also to create much more resilient farming, and less global — much more local food production, to produce more closer to where food is consumed, as well. And this is something we should've addressed a long time ago. Now it's more about reacting, now it's about funding the World Food Programme, and also supporting the United Nations in the very important work they're doing, in trying to broker the deal.
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Zain3:44
There needs to be much more diversification when it comes to world food sources. When you think about how much East Africa alone is reliant on Ukraine, we talk about who's affected by this, obviously it will lead to much more food insecurity around the world, obviously food prices rising and that sort of thing, but you also have to think about what this means for Ukrainian farmers as well. Just walk us through that perspective.
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Svein Holsether4:12
It's devastating. We have other colleagues on the ground in Ukraine. I'm struggling to find the right words to describe how proud I am of the work they do every day, working with farmers, to optimize production based on the input that they have available, and under very very challenging circumstances, to try to produce as much as possible. We had the burst of the dam just a few weeks ago, that destroyed a lot of arable land, and that is also impacting water availability for the production of food. The circumstances for the Ukrainian farmers, it was hard to make it worse than it was, and now on top of it they don't even know if they're going to be able to export the food that they produce. Zain, as you say, in Africa now, look at the statistics: Africa, total importing about 35 to 40 billion dollars worth of food every year when Africa could be a food exporter to the rest of the world. It could be the bread basket of the world. So it's also important that we keep the African farmers in mind, and also create a system to incentivize and support more growth of food in Africa as well.