Improving dairy products for a carbon-net-zero future
March 13, 2019 by Randi Dalgaard
Yesterday marked the release of a new strategy from Arla Foods launching their targets to accelerate the transition to sustainable dairy production.
The new strategy has an increased focus on the farms and we are pleased to see how our climate tool has now been applied to 5000 individual farms. The tool calculates climate footprints for the milk from each farm and thus demonstrates to the farmer where the CO2 emissions originate.
The numbers are a motivation in themselves, and often climate ’savings’ may also entail cost savings according to Jan Toft Nørgaard, a milk producer himself and chairman of Arla Foods.
In the project for Arla we have calculated climate footprint since 1990 and the Arla farmers have reduced their emissions per kilogram of milk by 24 %. The current average for the Arla farmers in the study is an emission intensity of 1.15 kg CO2 per kilogram of milk, which is approx. half of the global average, which is 2.5 kg CO2 (according to FAO).
Links to more information:
Arla press release (in Danish): https://www.arla.dk/om-arla/nyheder/2019/pressrelease/fremtidens-mejeriprodukter-skal-vaere-klima-neutrale-2845584/
Our project with ARLA is described in more detail here: https://lca-net.com/projects/show/carbon-footprint-milk/