Arla Foods develops climate database to reduce emissions

Arla Foods is launching an initiative across seven countries to triple the speed of CO2e reductions on farms and accumulate “one of the world’s largest sets of externally verified climate data from dairy farming”.

The Climate Check programme will be used to support Arla’s 9,900 farmer-owners in Northern Europe to fight climate impact.

Each farmer will input information from herd size to housing, milk volumes, feed usage and feed production, energy and fuel usage and renewable energy production.

The Climate Check will help farmers identify emissions and will provide a picture of the actions they can take to reduce emissions further. Data will be verified by an external advisor, which will visit farms to provide advice on action plans.

“Dairy is an excellent natural source of nutrients compared to its carbon cost, but we have a strong desire to make the balance between nutrients and CO2 even better,” said Arla chairman, Jan Toft Nørgaard.

“Arla farmers have already cut emissions by 24% since 1990, but we also recognise that it’s not enough. As in any other industry, we need to do more and we need to do it faster.”

As data from potentially 9,900 European dairy farms and an annual production of 14 billion litres of milk is submitted during 2020, Arla expects to build a foundation for knowledge sharing across the dairy industry.

“We will able be able to benchmark against our farmer colleagues on carbon footprint,” said Jan Toft Nørgaard. “But equally important, the data can be used to gain more knowledge and science-based solutions in collaboration with the agricultural sector and academic institutions.

“This will be important as we decide on which science-based solutions will take us to the next level in the fight against climate change.”

Arla will pay each farmer that signs up to the initiative a financial incentive of €0.01 per kilo of milk.

The company said the initiative will pave the way for it to reach its ambition to reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2030 and have a neutral climate impact by 2050.