Grass is greener: How Fonterra’s pasture-based model can reduce on-farm carbon emissions

06 Jun 2024 --- There is an increasing demand for more sustainable agriculture practices, especially in the meat and dairy spaces, and scientists, researchers and industry leaders are constantly innovating to address the trend. However, Fonterra says that a key to environmentally friendly milk production may lie not in creating new systems or feeds but in relying on older ones. Namely, pasture farming.

At the recent Vitafoods Europe tradeshow, we met with Fonterra’s European sales director, Maarten van de Poll, to discuss the practice and its industry implications.

“In New Zealand, we utilize an efficient pasture-based farming system,” Van de Poll tells Food Ingredients First. “We have lots of long sunshine, we have a lot of rain and the temperatures during the year are relatively mild, which is great for cows to be outside.”

“A New Zealand cow spends 350 days a year outside, so there’s no barn and for the vast majority of cows, I would say close to 99%, grass is the only source of feed and it’s a great natural food for the cow. Also, we don’t use additional feed, which has been shown to have a higher carbon footprint.”

Van de Poll emphasizes that pasture-based farming naturally provides a high level of animal welfare. This means cows are healthier, live longer and can provide quality milk for a longer duration.

Cutting down on carbon
Van de Poll highlights that Fonterra’s farms use very little energy. Moreover, he states that the energy Fonterra’s New Zealand farms use is sourced from the country’s electrical grid, which is approximately 80% renewable.

He also points out that for more than ten years, Fonterra has been actively collecting data and gaining insights into where the carbon impact is most significant for dairy farming.

“Roughly 86% of the carbon footprint is at the farm and only about 1% is transport,” Van de Poll reveals. “Very often people ask how sustainable it is to ship products from New Zealand across the globe, but if you look at the actual footprint, then indeed the way we farm in New Zealand has a much lower footprint.”

According to Van de Poll, Fonterra provides an informed insights report to each farm in New Zealand to show them where the carbon footprint impact is and what opportunities exist to further reduce their carbon footprints.

“That’s the point of the data collection,” he emphasizes. “The data journey begins with the collection across almost every aspect of a farmer’s operation, aggregated into their farm dairy records and this is combined with the co-ops’ and government data on milk quality and production and third party research to provide a totally unique resource for on-farm decision making.”

“By providing these best practices, seeing the results of these best practices and giving the insights to all the other farmers, they then have the opportunity to further bring down the carbon emissions.”Maarten van de Poll, Fonterra’s European sales director.

The co-operative also pledged to pay dairy farmers more for instituting these best practices and insights if they achieve one of the three levels of Fonterra’s “The Co-operative Difference” framework 

Looking toward the long-term
Van de Poll highlights that Fonterra’s regenerative agriculture pasture farming practices are directly linked to the company’s long-term climate and sustainability goals. These goals include being “net zero” by 2050 and reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% and Scope 3 emissions by 30% compared to the company’s 2018 baseline.

“It’s a consumer trend globally and we know that consumers want low-carbon products and, therefore, we developed the NZMP carbon footprint calculator to make it as simple for our customers as possible,” he explains. “When a customer buys a product from us, they can go online, look up the product and see what the carbon emissions are connected to that product and even look into the future at what the carbon impacts of that product will be in the years to come.”

“We know that our customers have sustainability targets as well and we provide them with insight showing that if they stay with us and our New Zealand-sourced products, they will reach a certain carbon reduction. That transparency is important to our customers and to retailers and consumers as well.”

Van de Poll spotlights that transparency is important for Fonterra because it allows the company to simply and clearly provide customers and consumers with the knowledge needed to make environmentally-friendly and future-proof decisions.

By William Bradford Nichols