Swiss dairy becoming more sustainable

Swiss dairy groups Emmi and Nestlé are working with milk producer organisations Aaremilch and the Central Swiss Milk Producers (ZMP), in launching the KlimaStaR Milch resource project.

The cross-industry initiative pursues the goal of jointly gaining scientifically-based knowledge in order to make the Swiss dairy industry more sustainable and competitive in terms of climate protection and resource efficiency.

A tailor-made mix of measures is aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural milk production by an average of 20%. The initiative is supported by the Federal Office for Agriculture (BLW) and will include around 300 pilot farms.

Bern University of Applied Sciences (HAFL) and ETH Zurich are supporting the project as scientific partners.

As part of a biological cycle, cows convert grass unusable for direct human consumption into nutrient-rich milk. But the question arises as to how dairy farming can further reduce its impact on the climate and how ruminants can also be part of sustainable and site-specific agriculture in the long term.

According to estimates by the United Nations, the dairy industry accounts for around 3% of total global carbon emissions. Although it is not one of the major causes of greenhouse gas emissions, solutions must be found, especially with regard to methane emissions from cows.

Further progress in the area of climate protection is also in the prime interest of local agriculture and milk processors, because, according to scenarios from the Swiss national centre for climate services, the climate in Switzerland is likely to be drier and hotter in the future.

KlimaStaR Milch aims to create a common basis for a more sustainable, resource-saving and site-specific Swiss dairy industry and to position it successfully in the long term.

By joining forces, the participants want to contribute to further reducing the climate footprint of milk and of dairy products, and thus also meet a growing consumer need. To this end, the initiative starts at the origin of the supply chain, milk production itself.

In order to achieve GHG reductions of 20%, it starts with four central points: feeding, herd management, energy and farmyard manure. Scientific survey methods and specially developed analysis technologies are used to measure progress.

Project sponsors have also set themselves reduction targets of 20% in the area of the so-called feed-food competition. In this context, food competition refers to the circumstance when food is used to feed animals, which would also be suitable for human consumption. This is the case, for example, when wheat is fed to cows.

Land competition arises, when animal feed comes from cultivated areas on which foodstuffs could also be grown. These undesirable interactions should be reduced with the help of resource-saving feeding methods and roughage-based dairy farming.

The initiative is scheduled to run for six years. From the scientifically supported results obtained, everyone involved expects partnership-based knowledge, which will allow the implementation of targeted measures beyond the project and thus help to further reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the Swiss dairy industry, which already are moderate by international comparison.

KlimaStaR Milch contributes to the respective climate ambitions of Emmi and Nestlé, both of which want to become climate-neutral by 2050.

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