Dairy Roadmap sees progress at stakeholder forum
The Dairy Roadmap
The Dairy Roadmap steering group highlighted to those attending the advancements in environmental sustainability within the dairy sector over the past five years, with the industry demonstrating tangible progress across key sustainability metrics. These include increased average milking age, reduced age at first calving, and shorter calving intervals – all clear indicators that the industry is dedicated to driving sustainable practices while promoting animal health and welfare.
A major highlight of the forum was the launch of the new Dairy Roadmap website, a new and dynamic platform offering science-backed best practice guidance for both farmers and processors. This resource not only supports continuous progress in sustainability but also serves as an industry hub to showcase the Roadmap’s legacy, vision, and goals to both dairy sector insiders and beyond. The steering group also unveiled two new working groups as part of the Roadmap initiative; the biodiversity working group, which will work towards the creation of a sector-wide biodiversity plan, and the processor working group, which will support better data collection for the purposes of benchmarking and support setting targets for processors.
John Powell, head of agricultural sectors at Defra, also joined to provide an update. He praised the success of the Roadmap initiative to date, highlighting how the dairy industry was ahead of other agricultural sectors with this initiative. He also provided an update on the current thinking of the new government and encouraged continued collaboration within industry and with government to achieve further progress on environmental aims.
Lyndon Edwards, chair of the Dairy Roadmap commented, “As the incoming chair of the Roadmap one of the key priorities I have is better communicating the aims and objectives of the Roadmap with farmers, as well as highlighting the achievements we’ve made so far. I’m also excited to drive forward positive change by identifying low hanging fruit for the industry, particularly farmers, and using the Roadmap and its resources to help industry identify the quick wins it can make to support positive practice.”