Sustainability and us
We have come a long way in the world with regard to sustainability and the impact humans have on the environment. From being a very small portion of a company’s portfolio, the issue of sustainability is now a necessary part of business. If you’re not doing enough to aid the process, it will be evident. Nowhere is this more evident than in the dairy sector. Every company has a sustainability manifesto, and Dairy UK’s Dairy Roadmap continues to offer guidance here in the UK.
Ideas keep coming in the sector. As a recent review in the Journal of Dairy Science showed, new nutrition strategies could reduce methane emissions by around 60 per cent in the coming years, via feed additives.1 This trend has been the subject of much discussion in the dairy seminar world, with dsm-firmenich’s Bovaer one of several products available for farmers globally now.
This is just the latest in a long line of processes to minimise dairy emissions. On processing sites, items such as solar panels and anaerobic digesters are becoming more common. It makes sense from a business perspective as well, according to Wyke Farms, which sources 100 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, including offsetting. It also filters and reuses its wastewater, and also has a Sustainable Energy Visitor Centre at its site in Somerset to tell visitors about its green journey.
Meanwhile, everyone can help, no matter the size of their space. As members of our local vegetable growing spaces, we have moved towards more wildlife friendly growing (although sometimes the foxes and slugs seem to think we grow things for them rather than for us), and the results has been, more frogs. Gone are the slug pellets and other chemical means, and I have installed a tiny pond on my plot. Pictured above is a long-standing occupant who I met the other day. I hope he and his friends enjoy the slugs.
- Suzanne Christiansen, editor, Dairy Industries International.
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