At Glanbia, dairy is in our DNA and our business occupies a significant space in our communities. From our cooperative heritage, our position as Ireland’s largest dairy processor and our extensive US milk supply, we add value to 8.7bn litres of milk collected annually from our pool of Glanbia milk suppliers.
Our leadership position in the sector sees us committed to playing a meaningful role in the sustainability journey for our farmers. We are on this journey together and we are committed to supporting our farmers in their effort to make their farms sustainable family businesses, which can be passed down from generation to generation, as has been the tradition in farming communities.
We have been thought leaders in the development of sustainability programmes and driving best practice with Bord Bia (Irish Food Board), the Innovation Center for US Dairy, the Dairy Sustainability Framework and the Global Dairy Platform. We share this knowledge and expertise with our farmer suppliers.
The challenge for our sector is to set a course for a carbon net zero future. In recent years we have put the building blocks in place through on-farm programmes on both sides of the Atlantic.
- Sustainable US Milk Supply: In 2019 Glanbia Nutritionals adopted the US Dairy Stewardship Commitment. The Commitment allows the value chain of US dairy to document and demonstrate progress on material sustainability areas. We have supported US Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) since its inception when the primary focus was animal welfare. The FARM programme has expanded in scope to include Environmental Stewardship (FARM ES), a model that calculates dairy’s carbon and energy footprint. We have been rolling out FARM ES across our direct farm supply and the tool is giving our farmers GHG and energy use tracking.
- Sustainable Irish milk supply: Over the past decade, Glanbia Ireland has pioneered on-farm sustainability. Today, all our Irish suppliers are accredited to Origin Green. The programme involves audits as part of the Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme (SDAS). Our farmers are given the tools to assess their carbon footprint (the carbon navigator) and the technical advice to develop practices to improve their footprint.
We are confident that through partnership we are well positioned to advance a carbon ambition. Although dairy farming has challenges to overcome its benefits as a uniquely nutritious wholefood and its advantages as a wholesome ingredient are important to consider, whilst accelerating the environmental journey to carbon net zero. We are also focused on optimizing farmer’s returns on the nutrient value of manure and the opportunity for on-farm energy production.
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