Soup-To-Nuts Podcast: Fonterra blazes trail for dairy to balance the health needs of people and the planet with Carbon Footprinter tool, Climate Roadmap

But for thousands of dairy farmers in New Zealand’s co-operative Fonterra, meeting the nutritional needs of a growing population need not come at the expense of the environment – rather by working together and with sustainability, farming and science experts to improve farming, manufacturing and supply operations, Fonterra believes it can produce nutritious dairy products that can enhance the health of people and the planet simultaneously.

In this episode of FoodNavigator-USA’s Soup-To-Nuts Podcast​, Fonterra President of Americas & Europe Richard Allen shares how Fonterra and its farmer partners ambitiously plan to reach net zero by 2050 and in doing so help the manufacturers that it supplies lower their Scope 3 emissions and advance their own journey to a net zero future. He also shares how Fonterra’s recently launched Carbon Footprinter tool will help manufacturers that source ingredients from the co-op understand how their Scope 3 emissions will be impacted by the dairy producer’s climate targets and initiatives.

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Fonterra’s Climate Roadmap begins with ‘bespoke environmental plans’ for farms​

At Fonterra and in New Zealand, Allen says environmental stewardship has always been a foundational cornerstone for dairy farming, including an early focus on water stewardship, animal welfare and creating “bespoke environmental plans” for individual farms.

“When you talk to dairy farmers, all of them will tell you they always want to leave the farm in a little bit better state than when they took over,” said Allen.

Their focus on how they do that has “shifted a little bit over the last 20 to 30 years,” with water stewardship being a major focus two decades ago, said Allen.

“Whether we like it or not, dairy farming does have an impact on the environment, and so for the last 20 years there has been a huge effort from the dairy industry in New Zealand … to lessen the impact of dairy farming on water,” including fencing 98% of the waterways on dairy farms, he explained.

Other focal points have included animal welfare with the acknowledgement that healthier animals create higher quality milk and offer other benefits to the farm, he added.

In the past five or six years, Fonterra has worked closely with its dairy farmers to create “bespoke farm environmental plans” that help both understand what is happening at each farm, set specific goals and track progress towards them. This also gave Fonterra a better understanding of the baseline of each of its co-operative partners, which in turn helped it create a specific but viable improvement plan at the co-op level.

The Fonterra Climate Roadmap: Towards net zero by 2050​

Allen adds that all of these helped lay the groundwork for Fonterra to publish last fall its Climate Roadmap, which outlines Fonterra’s strategy toward net zero by 2050 that is focused on emission reductions.

As Allen noted, Fonterra’s roadmap toward net zero in 2050 builds on baseline data collected in 2018 and incorporates the immediate action goals for 2025 of creating environmental plans for each of its farms, reducing by 40% the number of sites that use coal by the end of fiscal 2024 and publishing its first climate-related disclosure report.

In the next five years, Allen explains, the roadmap will accelerate progress and lays out significant goals to reduce Scope 1,2 and 3 emissions from the 2018 baseline. Beyond that, he said, Fonterra is exploring how novel technology and research can accelerate a regenerative mindset that will help not only Fonterra create positive change but help manufacturers that source ingredients from it also reduce their environmental impact.

Leveraging sustainability to improve productivity and profits​

Change of this magnitude not only takes time, but is expensive. And while as recently as a few years ago farmers and manufacturers could pass some of those added costs on to consumers who were willing to pay a premium for sustainably made products, consumers are less able to take on that burden now because inflation has drained their savings and forced them to stretch their budgets.

As such, Allen said, the conversation that Fonterra is having with its farmers and customers is how can environmental sustainability and shared responsibility improve farm productivity and enhance the value of their dairy.

Part of these conversations is breaking each goal down into more achievable annual targets and providing tools, resources and funding as need to reach them.

Allen explains Fonterra is helping its farmers reach the goals by investing in joint research focused on grass management, genetic improvement, novel technology and general support around data tracking and analysis.

“There is unlikely to be a silver bullet. This is going to take lots of little improvements and those little improvements are going to be different on every farm because every farm is different. What we want to do is provide the maximum number of options to our farmers at the lowest possible cost, and hopefully, at the maximum possible improvement in productivity, and then let them get on with what they do best, which is managing their farms,” explained Allen.

Fonterra’s Climate Roadmap, Carbon Footprinter helps manufacturers manage Scope 3 emissions​

Fonterra’s collective efforts not only benefit its farmers and the environment, but they also are helping manufacturers that source ingredients from the cooperative to meet their sustainability goals related to Scope 3.

“For a lot of our largest customers, dairy and their use of dairy in their products is the biggest contributor to their emissions profiles,” and so Fonterra is working closely with them to identify farm-level solutions that benefit both them and the co-op partners, said Allen.

Fonterra’s recently launched Carbon Footprinter tool is one example of how collective efforts at the farm level are helping manufacturers understand the environmental impact of the ingredients that source and ultimately make more sustainable procurement decisions.

The Carbon Footprinter brings together data collected at the farm and around milk quality to help manufacturers understand the environmental impact of the ingredients they source from Fonterra. The company also provides, independently, certification of the carbon footprint of the products manufacturers buy.

“The hardest part of a procurement manager’s job right now is … collecting all the data to understand what their Scope 3 emissions are,” and the Carbon Footprinter gives them the data they need and allows them to project the impact through 2030 based on Fonterra’s Climate Roadmap, Allen explained.

Companies interested in learning more about Fonterra’s Carbon Footprinter – as well as its other environmental sustainability initiatives – can do so at www.fonterra.com​, where Allen said the company will also publish annually a sustainability report with updates on its progress towards net zero and the goals laid out in its Climate Roadmap.