Dairy is a critical part of global food systems. This sector provides food for a growing population and supports significant numbers of jobs and livelihoods around the world. But in doing so, the dairy industry uses considerable amounts of natural resources, and is estimated to be responsible for 2.7% of GHG emissions globally.1
The first of our four food systems pathways focuses on enabling the transition to a more sustainable dairy industry. Our approach is built around two aims: helping to reduce the environmental footprint associated with dairy processing, and supporting smallholder farmers’ productivity, profitability and livelihoods.
Reducing the environmental impact of dairy processing
Innovative technologies and solutions are key to driving down the climate impacts of the equipment used for processing dairy products. Adopting best practices, scaling innovation and driving change means collaborating across the industry, which is why we are working with customers and the broader dairy value chain to make this urgently needed transformation. This collaboration includes signing up to the Pathways to Dairy Net Zero2 climate initiative and leading the Global Dairy Processing Taskforce. These are just some of the innovative ways we are exploring to further reduce GHG emissions in dairy processing.
Supporting smallholder farmers through our Dairy Hub model
Since 2011, our Dairy Hub model has supported smallholder farmers by linking them directly to dairy processors and providing hands-on training that helps them to increase milk production, quality and profitability while caring for animal welfare. Our training services and technology help increase the supply of locally produced quality milk, and the connection to formal markets helps increase profitability and improve farmers’ livelihoods. This means more milk of higher quality is available for our customers to source, while supplying milk to local producers helps improve food access for communities.
1 2023, source: PubMed, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37747649/.
2 2023, Source: Tetra Pak, https://www.tetrapak.com/about-tetra-pak/news-and-events/newsarchive/dairy-processing-task-force-announced.