Sustainability award within sight for Arla Foods Germany
Image: Arla
Nordic dairy cooperative, Arla Foods, is pursuing a climate strategy to reduce its carbon footprint along the entire value chain, says the company. Arla Foods Germany is now in the finals of the national German Sustainability Award, with winners being announced in December.
“We want to make dairy farming more sustainable and move forward. Together with our farmers, we work intensively to reduce emissions, from the farm to the supermarket shelf,” says Lillie Li Valeur, who is the CEO of Arla Foods Germany. “To this end, we are investing in extensive sustainability programs and measures along our entire value chain and have set ourselves ambitious, science-based climate targets by 2030. By 2050 we want to achieve net zero emissions. Being the only dairy company to be selected as one of the finalists in the German Sustainability Award is a great recognition and a strong incentive for our company and our Arla farmers to shape the future of a more sustainable dairy industry.”
Arla introduced annual climate checks on its dairy farms in 2020 to determine the carbon footprint. Today, Arla has the climate data (carbon footprint) for 94% of its farms, which corresponds to 98% of the milk volume. The data from the climate checks support farmers in implementing measures to reduce their carbon footprint on farms, through benchmarking with peer groups and advice from external experts. These range, for example, from optimal feeding, more sustainable arable farming, more environmentally friendly methods of manure storage and spreading to the health and longevity of the cows and the use of green electricity on the farm.
A total of 7% CO2e savings were achieved on the farms in 2021 compared to the base year 2015 (Arla Group). In summer 2023 Arla will introduce a sustainability surcharge of up to 4 eurocents per kilogram of milk for climate measures on farms in the farmers’ milk price.