Flux in Cameroon: lowering fertilizer costs for a huge agricultural project
Spreading silicate rock powder on farmland reduces the need for farmers to buy chemical fertilisers, because the powder fertilises soil on its own. It also enhances the soil’s uptake of chemical fertilisers. These cost savings are especially compelling when agricultural fertilizer prices remain higher than average, after spiking in 2022.
This economic argument for enhanced rock weathering is overlooked in discussions of its climate benefits. But cost benefits were an important factor in African Food Security’s agreement to work with Flux on a 205,000-hectare maize farming project in Cameroon. An operation on this scale can save hundreds of thousands of dollars by cutting its fertilizer bill — and boosting maize harvests in an environmentally beneficial way.
AFS, a for-profit company, is on a mission is to reduce food insecurity in Africa, starting in Cameroon. It expects a financial return on investment while also prioritising sustainability goals such as decarbonisation, environmental protection, local skill-building, and regenerative agricultural practices.
The Flux partnership will contribute to several of these goals.
Decarbonisation. The project has the potential to remove 1 million tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide over time through proven enhanced rock weathering methods. Flux software will model and measure the carbon drawdown — and help validate the credits deriving from the project. Cameroon is an ideal, though underdeveloped, site for enhanced rock weathering-based carbon removal for two reasons: the abundance of suitable rocks along the volcanic “Cameroon line,” and the prevalence of acidic, nutrient-poor soils that benefit the most from rock-powder fertilisers and incentivise farmers to spread the powder.
Environmental protection: Using rock-based soil additives improves soil health. This cascades benefits across the ecosystems where the rock powder is spread, including the soil’s ability to nourish plants visited by pollinators. It also reduces the need for synthetic fertilizers whose runoff can pollute land and water.
Skill-building: The project will help kickstart a CDR ecosystem in Cameroon. AFS and Flux scientists (working in Cameroon and Kenya, respectively) will collaborate on computational models and soil analysis. This learning can easily be applied to other parts of Cameroon. While the country has a history of forest carbon projects often managed in the Global North, enhanced rock weathering holds the potential to train young people in some of the most advanced MRV models of a “novel carbon dioxide removal” pathway.
Return on investment: Fertiliser prices more than doubled in parts of neighbouring Nigeria in 2023 versus 2022. They remain high across many parts of Africa, squeezing the profits of agricultural companies and threatening the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. By substituting some share — still to be determined — of chemical fertilizers with free rock powder, AFS will boost its farms’ profitability. It will also help alleviate the food shortages exacerbated by African farmers’ inability to afford fertilisers.
Solving food security in Africa is a multifaceted challenge that requires sustainable economics as much as sustainable agricultural practices. Few organisations understand this as well as African Food Security. AFS and Flux hope the collaboration will be a model for the west African region, showing how a new approach to agricultural fertilizers can lower food production costs while also benefitting the environment and climate.
The first phase of AFS’s project is likely to start later in 2025. As its farming operations expand to thousands of hectares, so will Flux’s data sets on everything from carbon drawdown to agricultural yield increases. Expect an update next year on one of the most ambitious, holistically “sustainable” projects in Africa.
