Sustainability Ambition 2035

Sustainability starts with the seed

With a history of 170 years, we have always seen seed as the starting point in striving for continual improvement in agriculture, growing more food using less land and inputs whilst enabling regionally adapted production and food security. By listening closely to farmers and foreseeing the changes and needs ahead, our ongoing research and breeding has been delivering improved sustainability for all of that time, helping us to build a unique position as seed specialist.

As agriculture faces intensifying challenges - from climate change and resource scarcity to rising global food demand - our new Sustainability Ambition 2035 provides a clear, future oriented framework to reflect our contributions toward resilient food systems, responsible operations and leadership, and strengthened partnerships with farmers and communities.

Our Sustainability Ambition 2035 focuses on four key clusters

Enhance agricultural resilience

Our ambition is to deliver yield gains consistently while developing varieties that are able to withstand challenges like drought, pests and diseases, and reduce the need of chemical inputs - ensuring farmers and growers benefit from both resilience and productivity.

To address this, KWS focuses on innovation leadership in plant breeding and R&D. The ambition centers on unlocking the full potential of hybridization in several crops, resistance breeding, and new breeding technologies to continuously drive genetic gain.

Through these advances, KWS supports farmers in producing more with fewer inputs, increasing yield stability across varying climatic and agronomic conditions, and ensuring resilience that supports long‑term food security.

Progress in plant breeding is the most relevant contributor to safeguard food production for a growing world population in the face of climate change and limited resources. Therefore, our target is to deliver annual yield gains for farmers through plant breeding, reaching a cumulative increase in core markets of at least 10% by 2035.

Empower farmers

Our ambition is to equip farmers with a diverse product portfolio across the full crop rotation, enriched by agronomic expertise and digital, data‑driven solutions to sustain both farms and the environment.

Empowering farmers requires a holistic approach that extends beyond seed. With our more than 700 “Seed Partners” (meaning colleagues that consult and support our customers globally), we ensure integrated crop rotation advice, local agronomic insights, and cross‑crop portfolio guidance tailored to regional needs.

Digital tools and services play an essential role in ensuring production security - offering decision support, field monitoring, and agronomic recommendations, even when direct on‑farm presence is not possible.

By combining plant breeding innovation with tailored agronomic and digital support, KWS helps farmers and growers optimize cultivation processes, strengthen sustainability performance, and adapt successfully to evolving market and climatic conditions.

To ensure we can make best use of our know-how, tools and support options, our target is to reach a total of 35 million hectares – a size which equals the total land area of Germany - through our personal and digital advice by 2035.

Drive sustainability in our operations

Our ambition is to reduce the ecological footprint of KWS operations by implementing state‑of‑the‑art, resource‑efficient measures that lower greenhouse gas emissions and ensure responsible and efficient water management.

KWS recognizes its own responsibility not only as a provider of sustainable solutions to farmers and growers, but also as an operator of global breeding, research, and production facilities.

Scope 1 and 2 emissions

This ambition focuses on implementing modern, efficient technologies across our operational footprint, targeting a 50% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions until 2030 and a 63% reduction by 2035, aligned with leading international climate pathways for limiting global temperature increase.

Investments in renewable energies, systematic improvements in energy efficiency, and the reduction and replacement of fossil fuels in our operations are the core levers of our decarbonization strategy. These measures are complemented by continuous optimization of technologies and processes across our sites, enabling a sustained reduction in our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.

Water efficiency

Recognizing water efficiency as a material aspect of our environmental impact, we are strengthening our commitment to responsible water use. Through the development and implementation of site-specific water management concepts, we target to continuously enhance water efficiency across our breeding stations, especially in regions exposed to high or extremely high water stress.

Foster social and employee engagement

Our ambition is to promote a culture of trust, belonging and growth for KWS employees, ensuring occupational health and safety that exceed recognized benchmarks.

At the same time, we place a clear focus on supporting the communities where we are active with expertise, resources, and initiatives that create social impact.

Employee engagement

Employee engagement measures the degree of emotional attachment of employees to their employer and thus their commitment and motivation at work (the extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to the company's success and the realization of its goals). Engaged employees perform better and thus have a positive influence on the profitability and competitiveness of companies.

Therefore, we have established annual global employee engagement surveys which will help us to monitor employee expectations and improve our systems and offers accordingly since 2024. KWS now continuously measures and seeks to improve our employee engagement index. Our target is to consistently meet or exceed the global benchmark.

Lost Time Incident Rate (LTIR)

KWS is committed to continuously improving working conditions and safeguarding the health and safety of our employees worldwide — from preventing workplace incidents to ensuring safe daily operations and supporting mental well‑being.

In recent years, we have centralized our occupational accident database to gain a global view of incident patterns and root causes. Ongoing analysis of this data enables us to strengthen our processes and safety measures in a targeted and effective way.

A key performance indicator in this context is the Lost Time Incident Rate (LTIR), which measures the number of workplace related incidents resulting in at least one lost workday per 1,000,000 hours worked. Our target for 2035 is to achieve an LTIR of 5 or lower. This is both ambitious and realistic, reflecting KWS’s strong safety standards — particularly in an agricultural environment where structural accident risks are typically higher than in many other industries.

Social spending

KWS commits to investing in social projects around the globe. The amount spent will be divided to support donation and sponsoring projects. We place special emphasis on supporting children and young people. The focus of our social commitment is on promoting education and science, especially in the field of natural and agricultural sciences. Furthermore, we engage in the development of the rural environment of our locations on a cultural, social, and socio-economic level to promote the general welfare of the inhabitants as well as to increase the overall attractiveness of the locations. Our projects include international school garden projects, scholarships, Jugend Forscht Junior, and development cooperations in Africa. By 2035, our target is to invest at least 1% of the yearly EBIT in external, social projects.

"Sustainability in agriculture is not determined by a single factor, but along the entire value chain. At KWS, we start with the seed: through breeding advances, practical advice, and clear targets. With our Sustainability Ambition 2035, we are establishing a binding framework for our contribution."

Dr. Felix Büchting, CEO

Sustainability starts with the seed

KWS is a leading seed specialist providing solutions for economically viable, ecologically durable and socially responsible farming. A diverse and thriving portfolio of varieties developed using innovative breeding methods enables a significant reduction of inputs while safeguarding stable and high yields. KWS proves to be a trusted partner for farmers and the food value chain.