At Arla we don’t do things by halves. Our farmer owners have some of the most stretching environmental and welfare standards in the world. That’s because they own the cooperative, and so they set the standards to show how much they care.
"Every day Arla farmers take steps to support and shape Britain’s countryside. No one feels the effects of varying weather patterns more than farmers, it has a direct impact on the animals we care for, the food we produce and the money we make. We’ve taken some big steps at Arla, but we can’t take our foot off the pedal. Every business and individual in every walk of life will need to think about their impact on the world in the years to come."
Arla farmer owner - Arthur Fearnall
Being a cooperative we know that working together achieves more than working alone. Never is this more true when we think about how we care for our planet. That’s why we are working with retailers like Morrisons and Aldi who pay us more for their milk to enable farmers to experiment and trial new technologies and farming practices in our Arla UK 360 programme. This farmer led programme enables us to continue driving efficiencies alongside world class animal welfare standards and cutting-edge sustainability techniques. While every Arla farmer commits to delivering activities on farm that help wildlife and nature, the Arla UK 360 programme helps farmers work out the best way to do this. For example, programmes such as Project Pollinator, which sees our farmers give their land back to nature to ensure our vital pollinators have enough food.
And through our technology trials where, because cows can’t tell us if they have a pain or a niggle we are seeing whether cameras and daily body scanning can help us identify if a cow’s movement changes. Any changes may suggest they need a little extra attention from the farmer or a vet.
Our main challenge when pursuing carbon net zero farming is the belches that come from the cows. UK dairy cows alone cannot be blamed for global warming, not least because there are fewer cows in the UK now than ten years ago and each litre of UK milk is made with fewer emissions due to more efficient farming. The truth is we’ll never remove the methane emissions from cows and their calves in their entirety, but we are researching how different supplementary foods for cows, may reduce emissions, and we’re working with scientists to get a better understanding of just how many emissions dairy farming helps remove from the atmosphere. And, when we’ve reduced cow and calf emissions as much as we can, we’ll be looking to offset the rest.
Those living in rural areas and day trippers to the British countryside will be familiar with the pungent aroma lingering in the air after a farmer has been out muck-spreading – often ironically referred to as ‘that fresh country air’, it’s the by-product of the natural cow-poo, or slurry, used as fertilizer.
These new targets come after the cooperative, owned by 10,300 farmers across the UK, Germany, Den-mark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium shows business growth can be achieved without environmental impact. While Arla has managed more than 40% more milk since 2005, its CO2 emissions have reduced by 22% across production and packaging; on farms CO2 emissions per kilo of milk have re-duced by 24% since 1990.
The dairy farmers that own Arla have announced today that they are setting out to create the worlds’ largest climate database as they head towards carbon net zero by 2050. builds on its already impressive track record.
