Environment

Environmentally friendly diets need to be healthy.  Providing a growing world population with more sustainable and healthy food is a big challenge for the future. In seeking solutions to how we can best develop sustainable food systems it must be remembered that it takes more than adequate calories to feed humans. The dairy sector has been pioneering on the challenge to reduce environmental impact and protect nature, setting ambitious targets of GHG reduction, committing to further reductions and significant investment in research and development to find innovative and sustainable ways to produce and process nutritious milk and dairy products.

The result has been improvements in environmental performance, producing more nutritious milk and dairy products with fewer natural resources, less water, and less energy.  In 2013, the global dairy sector launched the Dairy Sustainability Framework to enable the industry to continuously improve and demonstrate adaptation and mitigation progress made through proactive efforts. In 2015, the dairy sector was the first one to develop a life cycle assessment methodology to measure its footprint. In 2016, the International Dairy Federation and FAO signed the Dairy Declaration of Rotterdam, a commitment by the global dairy sector to the achievement of the UN sustainable development goals.

The sector is continually finding new ways to improve sustainability, increase energy efficiencies, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce water, save energy, and lower operating costs for dairy farms.