Milking sustainability

Sustainability goals for the U.S. dairy industry

Posted by Meredith Niles (Guest Contributor) at 12:19 PM on 03 Jul 2008

Read more about: food | organic food | climate | greenhouse-gas emissions | business

Last week, we witnessed the dairy industry hold their first ever Sustainability Summit for U.S. Dairy. The week long conference culminated in the announcement of an industry-wide commitment and action plan to reduce milk's "carbon footprint" while simultaneously increasing business value (translation: profit) from farm to consumer. But how truly "green" are their efforts?

Sustainability -- ah, it sounds so good doesn't it? In recent years it has become the buzz word among businesses. Most large corporations have sustainability officers and are taking huge strides to become "greener." In part, these initiatives are driven by consumer and public demand for better accountability, social and environmental justice and healthier products. Last week, we witnessed the dairy industry jump on the bandwagon when they held their first ever Sustainability Summit for U.S. Dairy. The week long conference culminated in the announcement of an industry-wide commitment and action plan to reduce milk's "carbon footprint" while simultaneously increasing business value from farm to consumer.

I am timidly optimistic. Conventional dairy production worldwide is an incredibly energy intensive system that relies on chemicals, hormones, and feed crops grown with pesticides and fertilizers. It is estimated that dairy production contributes almost 155 billion pounds of CO₂ to the atmosphere per year -- the equivalent of more than 14 million cars. With such a massive carbon impact, I am relieved to see the dairy industry finally recognize the need to reduce its impact on global warming. Among key actions are a variety of efforts to reduce energy use and thus emissions and costs. If these ideas are put into real action, dairy's efforts should be applauded as a step in the right direction. Yet, they seem to be missing the bigger picture.

You can't help notice that these action initiatives appear to be driven by economic incentives with emission reductions taking a backseat. Perhaps, in these times of continually rising fuel prices, the dairy industry is starting to realize just how unsustainable their methods truly are. Fortunately, the industry can achieve both a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions and an increase in profits -- not through any far-fetched technologies to increase production, but by returning to the more natural organic systems that consumers are increasingly demanding.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that organic dairy production produces between one-half to one-third fewer greenhouse-gas emissions and uses about 30 percent less energy than conventional dairy production. Reduced energy costs help offset the price of methane digesters for manure, which could then provide long-term energy production for on-farm power needs.

With organic milk -- one of the most commonly purchased organic products -- there is also a financial incentive. Despite increasing food prices, demand for organic products continues to rise. Since organic dairy producers are paid a premium for their products, organic dairy puts more money in farmers' pockets.

To me it seems like a win-win situation, so I am perplexed as to why the dairy industry's action initiatives don't include any transitions to organic production systems. I have hope that the dairy industry may catch up, but I'm not willing to wait. You can reduce your own greenhouse-gas emissions by purchasing organic, grass-fed, and local milk, cheeses, and dairy products to reduce your carbon footprint and help support community farmers. Check out the Cool Foods Campaign website for additional ways to reduce your own FoodPrint.

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10 Comments | Post a Comment

Actually, the GHG inventory was big picture

Meredith:

I was at the Summit, and have got to say the picture from a GHG inventory picture was pretty broad, down to including savings from encouraging pasturing, as well as reduced nitrogen volatilization savings from crop farming practices such as organic farming.

I'd be interested in your claim that organic fluid milk has 50% of the emissions. That seems very large and impressive to me. What study is that?

Tom Arnold Chief Environmental Officer TerraPass

by TerraPassTom at 3:14 PM on 03 Jul 2008

Premium for organic dairy farmers

Unfortunately despite the fact that the retailer and the processor make very good profit on organic dairy, the farmers are currently losing up to 60 cents a gallon because of the reluctance of processors to pay more.
The farmers reward for working with the environment not against it; conserving energy and being a good steward of the land is to lose money on a high quality product.
I'm not sure where the figure of 50% comes from for dairy but The Organic Center has done a study that shows that organic corn uses 30% less energy than conventional grown corn. Conventional dairy use a great deal of petroleum based fertilizers go the figure of 50% could come from there.

by Ed Maltby at 5:33 PM on 03 Jul 2008

You can reduce your own ghg emissions by...

not buying cow's milk at all.

When will it dawn on us that the concept of "organic milk" from an oversized, methane-spewing, watershed-poisoning, energy-devouring, semi-domesticated, hoofed monstrosity is an absurdity?

Just wonderin.

by guade00 at 8:42 PM on 03 Jul 2008

sustainability, the "buzz word"

Absolutely, Meredith. Whenever we see that miserably doubtful word, we should strongly suspect green-washing in progress.

It is actually rather conservative, smooth-bellied, hammock-loving and anti-revolutionary: Just a tweak here, a minor adjustment there, and we can all carry on with our mindless hedonist materialist lifestyles as before.

And for how many more decades is that supposed to last? Is "sustainability" sustainable?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 12:33 AM on 04 Jul 2008

cows and environmentalism

Guade00's rhetorical question is brilliant.

One might note that Meredith Niles wrote a nearly 50-line essay, in seven paragraphs, about milk production, without once (so far as I can see) using the word "cow."

No, not once.

Whatever could Meredith have been thinking?

Environmentalism is for the cows. When we say (or believe) that we human beings come first, and the cows, etc., are a negligible afterthought, then how are we not as irrationally speciesist (selfishly cruel, really) as the anthropocentrist religionists whom many of us love to mock and dismiss?

In fact, it seems that dairy cows are perhaps the most numerous among our several extremely abused captive vertebrates, at this stage in human history. Aside from the close confinement that most of them suffer, as well as the over-frequent abusive manipulation of their bodies, we should add that the forced separation of mothers from new-born calves counts as well as a serious ethical issue.

How in the world can the continued abuse of these fellow sentient creatures ever be "sustainable"?

It is troubling, even a bit frightening, that Meredith Niles can write a serious environmentalist article on the dairy industry, with reference solely to GHG emissions, and with no reference whatsoever to our close cousins, in chains, in pain, the cows.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 1:10 AM on 04 Jul 2008

Certainly there are animal issues to consider

With regards to the reference by caniscandida, certainly there are many animal rights issues to consider in the production of all of our meat and dairy and I do not doubt this. Thank you for reminding everyone that this should always be a part of the discussion in animal issues. However, for this piece, I wanted to focus solely on the initiative of the Dairy industry and what they are doing to fight greenhouse gas emissions. My piece was by no means meant to doubt the inhumane conditions that most of the animals raised for food in this country have to endure everyday and those issues absolutely need to be addressed.

Meredith Niles Cool Foods Campaign Coordinator The Center for Food Safety www.coolfoodscampaign.org www.centerforfoodsafety.org

by Meredith Niles at 3:05 PM on 04 Jul 2008
[ Parent ]

Organic Milk Studies

Hi Tom- thanks for your comments and the update on the conference. I certainly hope that they are talking about organic practices among other things- it is certainly promising to hear the industry is holding sustainability summits.

With regards to your inquiry about the studies- below are the citations for 4 journal articles discussing the GHG emissions of dairy production.
With the first, they did sampling on 15 different farms to examine their GHG emissions. I averaged the results to produce an analysis of organic vs. conventional. It is in this study that they demonstrate that the average CO2 emissions less than half in organic systems vs. conventional.

(Weiske, A., Vabitsch, A., Olesen, J.E., Schelde, K., Michel, J., Friedrich, R., Kaltschmitt, M., 2005. Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in European conventional and organic dairy farming. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ.)

Olesen, et al., 2006. Modelling greenhouse gas emissions from European conventional and organic dairy farms. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 112, 207-220)

Gronroos et al., 2006. Energy use in conventional and organic milk and rye bread production in Finland. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 117, 109-118.

Cederberg et al., 2000. Life Cycle Assessment of milk production- a comparison of conventional and organic farming. Journal of Cleaner Production. 8, 49-60.

Meredith Niles Cool Foods Campaign Coordinator The Center for Food Safety www.coolfoodscampaign.org www.centerforfoodsafety.org

by Meredith Niles at 3:31 PM on 04 Jul 2008
[ Parent ]

Good examples

There are some excellent dairies in Northern California that take very good care of their cows. The very best is Marin's Straus Family Dairy. My favorite milk producer is Clover, which has farms in Sonoma and Marin counties. Both of these feature lots of room and plenty of grass for their animals.

If we could limit our dairy consumption (for those of us who can and want to consume dairy, of course) to such operations, it would make a huge difference to the cows, to human health and to the planet.

Eat what you grow, grow what you eat

by PermieWriter at 10:46 AM on 07 Jul 2008

Organic actually 8% more

Meredith:

I pulled the Wieske et al. article, and taking the data from Table 1, its pretty clear that organic dairies in his sample produce 8% more kg CO2e per kg of milk than conventional dairies. Disappointing, but true. I didn't dive into your other studies.

Now this wasn't the thrust of the article, and it was only a sample of 12 farms, not enough to discount the gains from organic practices.

Wieske's thrust of the paper is to quantify gains from managing manure, livestock efficiencies, and biogas production at both conventional and organic dairy farms.

The first and last were both central to analysis prepped and strategies explored at the DMI conference.

Tom Arnold Chief Environmental Officer TerraPass

by TerraPassTom at 2:42 PM on 08 Jul 2008

In Response to the Comments made by guade00

In response to the comment by guade00:

I feel that there are two types of environmentalists out there. The ones that can help make this system (that believe it or not we are pretty much stuck with - so deal with it) better by advocating for solutions like organics, and there are those who are the naïve environmentalists. And you, guade00 are a naïve environmentalist. I am personally a vegetarian. I choose to not to drink milk and I rarely eat other dairy products. This is simply my choice and I couldn't be happier with it, but to think that everyone is suddenly going to give up drinking milk because cows are an "oversized, methane-spewing, watershed-poisoning, energy-devouring, semi-domesticated, hoofed monstrosity" is simply preposterous.

This type of idea is what is holding people back from eating less meat, drinking less milk, driving their cars less and taking public transportation, choosing to limit their use AC and heat, walking more, biking more, growing their own food, eating organics, farmers choosing organic, etc. If people see an all or nothing choice (like yours) they are more likely to be put off by it and choose the easier step, immediately, and thereby doing so they will be more likely to be put off by similar choices later on. Let us remember one of the first rules of economics - people are self-interested.

Thinking that people will stop buying milk is a great idea, but not a practical one. Remember we don't want to push people out - we want to bring people in. So let's bring the organic standard to the front line and let that be the baseboard for our new ideas and new standards. Allowing people to choose organic milk as one way of reducing their footprint will open people's eyes to a whole new way of seeing the world, one where they have a choice and where that choice matters.

by VegHead at 8:08 AM on 10 Jul 2008
[ Parent ]

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