Good afternoon. My name is Richard Downey, Nutrien's Vice President, Investor Relations. Before the start of today's meeting, we would like to outline the agenda and various procedures and guidelines. In terms of agenda, our Chair, Russ Girling, will call the meeting to order and address various preliminary matters. This will be followed by a brief address from Mayo Schmidt, our President and CEO.
The items of business to be voted on will then be moved to be followed by a formal discussion, if any, of those items and a brief general shareholder question and answer session. Registered shareholders and proxy holders of record are now able to submit questions or comments for formal discussion or the general Q and A session via the messaging platform on your screen and the electronic ballot for voting is also now available on your screen. You are encouraged to submit any comments or questions and complete your ballot in advance of the Q and A session. Voting will then close and the Chair will report the voting results. During the formal discussion and Q and A portion of the meeting, comments or questions will be read aloud before being addressed and the name of the submitting shareholder or proxy holder may be disclosed.
Comments or questions that are redundant or that have inappropriate language or otherwise unduly disruptive to the orderly conduct of the meeting will not be addressed and general shareholder questions that are not part of the formal discussion of meeting items of business may not be addressed at all. If during the course of the meeting, we encounter any technical difficulties with the webcast, please remain logged on and we will resume as soon as practical. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that today's meeting may include forward looking statements. These statements are given as of today's date and involve risks and uncertainties discussed in our filings with security regulators. A number of factors and assumptions were applied in the formulation of such statements and actual results could differ materially.
For additional information with respect to forward looking statements, factors and assumptions, we direct you to Nutrien's public filings. I will now turn things over to Russ.
Thank you, Richard, for outlining today's agenda, our procedures and the guidelines. And good afternoon, and welcome to all of you to this annual meeting of Nutrien. As Richard said, my name is Russ Girling, and I'm the Chair of the Board of Directors. The meeting will now come to order. As Chair of the Board, I will act as Chair of the meeting.
In the event that I'm disconnected from the meeting as a result of a technical issue, Mr. Schmidt will assume the role of Chair of the meeting. Mr. Bob Kirkpatrick, the Corporation's Corporate Secretary, will act as Secretary of the meeting. With the concurrence of the meeting, I appoint Jennifer Oliver of Computershare Investor Services Inc.
As scrutineer. I've been informed by the scrutineer that we have shareholders present or represented by proxy who hold a sufficient number of shares to constitute a quorum. I therefore declare that there is a quorum at this meeting. The scrutiny report will be kept by the secretary with the records of this meeting. This year, Nutrien used notice and access to deliver its annual financial statements and meeting materials.
And as a result, the notice of meeting and management proxy circular are accessible on Nutrien's website and under Nutrien's profile on SEDAR and EDGAR. I've received the affidavits of publication of the record date for this meeting and of the distribution of notice and access and the proxy form. I directed a copy of the notice together with proof of service be kept by the secretary with the records of this meeting. I now declare the meeting regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. And with that, Mayo Schmidt, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will now provide a few comments.
Thank you, Russ, and good afternoon, everyone. The importance of food security has never been more apparent than this past year, the year of the pandemic. And it has also been reinforced by the significant increase in global crop prices over the past 4 months. Farmers around the world will need to achieve optimal yields and higher crop production levels to ensure sufficient food productions globally this year, but also in the decades to come given the growing global population. And just as importantly, we need to achieve this goal in a sustainable manner.
Our team at Nutrien continues to produce and deliver crop inputs and services in a safe, efficient and sustainable way, meeting the needs of our growers around the world. We would not be able to do this without our more than 25,000 employees. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their resilience, adaptability and efforts over the past year. I would also like to thank our Board of Directors for their strong governance and support for our culture and strategy, which continues to drive our business forward. Nutrien's strong purpose driven culture has enabled the execution of our strategy and has delivered exceptional results.
Through our core values of safety and integrity, we are able to respond to the challenges and create opportunities. Was never more apparent than over the past year, where we rapidly implemented the safety protocols needed to continue to operate, to serve our customers and to support our communities. Turning to our strategy, I will provide a brief update on the following priorities: Safety, Health and Environment People, Culture and Communities Capital Allocation and Sustainability. On safety, health and environment, nothing matters more to Nutrien than sending our employees home safe every day and protecting the environment. In 2020, we achieved industry leading safety results with improvements across the majority of our business units.
Our lost time injury frequency rate for Nutrien improved 26% from 2019 to 2020. Our employees and culture are paramount to our success. We are committed to our purpose of growing the world from the ground up and have seen the results in our 2020 engagement survey where our employees reported an overall score of 89%. Equity, diversity and inclusion is also a key focus for Nutrien. And in 2020, we saw an increase to almost 20% of senior leadership positions held by women and we also made significant strides by establishing an inclusion council, which is made up of senior leaders to drive results in this area.
We strongly believe in being a partner in the communities where we operate. For example, in 2020, we doubled our existing food security support to approximately $2,000,000 to over 200 food programs across the regions in which we operate. Nutrien's unique integrated business, which provides end to end products and services to growers, demonstrated its resiliency and structural advantages over the past year and are now well positioned to take advantage of improving ag fundamentals. The increase of our company allowed for continued investment on our key strategic growth priorities and we will continue to focus on applying our complete compete for capital strategy, balancing growing the business against additional returns of capital to shareholders. We remain on track with our November 2020 Investor Day target of increasing EBITDA by $1,000,000,000 by 2025 through actions under management's control.
These include a focus on continued growth in retail both organically and from accretive acquisitions, continuing with our investments in our leading digital platform to enable efficiencies and further strengthen our competitive edge, investments in mining automation and self generated heat and power initiatives in the potash business that will further improve our competitive cost position and improve safety and environmental outcomes. Continue to evaluate low cost brownfield opportunities across our nitrogen business and execute our ESG strategy including completing the pilots for our innovative carbon program. Further on sustainability, Nutrien is committed to creating long term value with continued improvements in our ESG performance and commitments that drive sustainable, climate focused and inclusive agriculture. This brings us full circle back to our purpose with agriculture addressing the challenges of feeding a population that is expected to grow by 2,000,000,000 people over the next 30 years while we protect our planet. We will be hosting an ESG stakeholder update event on June 9 to outline our commitments, targets and how we envision helping to transform the agriculture industry.
I encourage you to market on your calendars. It's an exciting time for agriculture and crop input sectors. We are currently seeing strong fundamentals and expect this to extend into at least next year. It's a pivotal time in our industry and Nutrien is extremely well positioned to help lead the sector in the next evolution of agriculture. Thank you very much for your interest in Nutrien.
I will now turn things back over to Russ.
Thank you, Mayo. The next matter on the agenda is the presentation of the comparative financial consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020, and the report of the auditors. In accordance with the Canadian Business Corporations Act, the statements are presented to the meeting, but no further action is required with respect to them. It is now in order to move today's formal business items. I'll move each item and I have been advised by Mr.
Schmidt and Mr. Kropatrik, both proxy holders in attendance today, that they would be prepared to second each of the motions I so move. Accordingly, unless there are any objections, I will take such motions as seconded and no further action needed. Voting on the applicable items, a business to come before today's meetings is being conducted by a single electronic ballot. It is now available and voting will close approximately 1 minute following the conclusion of the formal discussion and the question and answer session.
Once voting closes, the scrutineer will tabulate the results of the vote for each matter. All items of business identified in the notice meeting will be moved. First is the election of the directors. The management proxy circular sets forth the background of each of the nominees and the qualifications considered in making director nominations. In April, we announced that Chuck Magro had stepped down as Nutrien's President and Chief Executive Officer and as a director.
As a result, the Board has reduced the number of directors from 12 to 11. Only the remaining 11 nominees listed in the management proxy circular will be nominated for election today and votes may be cast in favor of the nominees. The proposed nominees are Christopher Burley, Maura Clark, Miranda Hubbs, Raj Keshawa or Alice Labarge, Consuelo Madre, Keith Martel, Aaron Regent, Mayo Schmidt, Nelson Silva and myself, Russ Girling. Thank you to all the nominees for agreeing to stand for election today. I move to formally nominate as a Director each of the proposed nominees.
As there are no nominations in accordance with the advanced notice requirements of the company's general by law, I declare the nominations closed. I also move to elect each of the 11 named individuals as directors of the corporation. As advised earlier, I take such nominations or such motions as seconded. Formal discussion, if any, will take place once all items of business identified in the notice meeting have been moved. So the next matter on the agenda is the appointment of the auditors.
I move that resolution be approved reappointing KPMG LLP chartered accountants as auditors of corporation to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting or until a successor is appointed and take such motion as seconded. The next item of business for the meeting today is the consideration and approval of the non binding advisory resolution accepting the corporation's approach to executive compensation disclosed in the management's proxy circular. I move that such resolution be approved and take such motion as seconded. The motions are now open for formal discussion and the general shareholder questions and answers can now be answered. And I turn it over to Richard to read those comments and questions and we'll address them accordingly.
Thanks, Russ. I think this is a question for Mayo. It comes from Jeff Carlson, a shareholder, who references that in our annual report, we said on February 17, 2021, our Board approved a share repurchase program of up to a maximum of just over 28,000,000 shares or 5% of our outstanding common shares for cancellation. He says that current share prices is about $2,000,000,000 I believe the use of company earnings to repurchase its own shares is a poor use of capital and consistent with a vision of long term growth for the company. The market can be irrational in its share pricing and shares might be purchased at overvalued market prices, which therefore would destroy shareholder value.
Doesn't it make more sense to deploy this capital in ways that will actually grow the company and return these earnings directly to shareholders in the form of higher or special dividends? With this question in mind, why does the Board continue to adopt the long term policy of repurchasing its own shares?
Well, thank you for that good question. Our Board of Directors is responsible to oversee the development and execution of the company's strategy and of course is also to steward investor capital in a way that aligns with our purpose and maximizes long term shareholder value. So I would take this opportunity to highlight that there is risk in any investment decision including share repurchases. And that's why having a rigorous compete for capital process where a number of factors are taking into consideration, the most important of which is an investment IRR, internal rate of return. So it does depend on where management believes the share price should be trading at and whether buybacks would be attractive at the existing price.
We do continue to see opportunities to invest in our business and to grow it further, particularly to grow our retail operations and also to invest in our NPK business to lower our costs and potentially increase production. So thank you for your question.
Thanks, Neil. There are no more questions at this time. So I will now turn it back over to Russ.
Thanks, Richard. So discussion of the items of business and our general Q and A session are now closed. Accordingly, there is now 1 minute remaining to complete your ballot, after which your ballot will automatically be submitted. As a reminder, you can vote for or withhold in respect to each of the 11 director nominees and the appointment of KPMG and for or against the non binding advisory resolution regarding Nutrien's approach to executive compensation. Music will now play in the background for a period during this final voting session.
Based on the proxy tabulation results provided by the scrutineer regarding the matters to be voted on. With respect to the resolutions regarding election of each of the individuals nominated as directors, I declare that each of the 11 nominees are elected as directors of the corporation. With respect to the resolution reappointing KPMG LLP as auditors of the corporation, I declare this motion carried the resolution carried. With respect to the non binding advisory resolution accepting the corporation's approach to executive compensation, again, I declare this resolution carried. So with that, there being no further business, I move that the meeting be terminated and such motion I take as seconded.
I declare the motion carried and the meeting is now terminated. Thank you all for taking the time to join our meeting today and for your continued support of Nutrien.