Overview

Fonterra is working to reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of milk produced in a pastoral/regenerative dairy farming model to achieve lower GHG emissions per unit of nutrients delivered.

Fonterra uses its Farm Insights tool to track the productivity and carbon footprint of each of its 8,300 farmers every year. This allows them to monitor improvements and understand the impact of new technology to increase productivity or reduce GHG emissions. Highly productive pasture-based dairy production systems are a way of producing low GHG footprint milk (Ledgard et al. 2020) using regenerative farming practices, which can be further lowered once scalable cost-effective methane inhibitors become available (www.agrizero.nz).  

SNi has developed a global food system model (the DELTA Model), national dietary models (iOTA Models), global nutrient trade models and is working on two national food system models for land use. These models look at the use of land for all food production purposes and the nutritional, social, environmental and economic consequences of land use and changes to land use. These models will be made freely available and adapted for use in other countries, results published in peer reviewed journals, with information and advice provided to policy and decision makers. 

Key actors

• Farmers/producers

• Scientists (e.g. in NZ, Sustainable Nutrition Initiative (SNi)/Riddet Institute, Fonterra Research and Development Centre). 

• Dairy product manufacturers

• Developers and manufacturers of new technology to enable low-emissions farming (e.g. through Agri Zero partnership in NZ) or develop new nutrition products (e.g. Fonterra’s Ki Tua Fund)

• On farm adoption experts (e.g Fonterra providing Farm Insights Reports, industry good such as DairyNZ) to ensure farmers applying new technology and practice

• Geneticists and other technical experts (e.g. nature-based solutions)

Alignment with EAT-Lancet Commission

• The nutritional and sustainability credentials of dairy can be found in the recently published book Legendairy (see attached).  Dairy provides a disproportionately positive contribution to nutrition.  Dairy is in the top 5 of all global food for the provision of 23 out of 29 nutrients in the DELTA Model.

• Annual milk production at over 900b litres is approx. 8% of total food biomass but has a disproportionate contribution to global nutrient provision, providing 49% of food calcium, 24% of vitamin B2, 18% of lysine, and more than 10% for a further five indispensable amino acids, overall protein availability, vitamins A, B5 and B12, phosphorus and potassium, plus smaller percentages of a wide range of other nutrients.

• Dairy also makes a substantial contribution to economies, employing approximately 240 million people and supporting the livelihoods of up to one billion.   

For more information contact: Andy Macfarlane at ANDY@MACFARLANE.NZ