For Danish-Swedish milk cooperative, Arla Foods, driving change towards more sustainable milk production is a core value. However, as dairy farming practices are responsible for approximately 50% of the carbon footprint of milk, getting farmers onboard with this mission is an essential part of making a change.
At the FOSS Milk Symposium in May 2024, Agriculture Sustainability Director, Hanne Bang Bligaard from Arla Foods presented how they work with measuring carbon footprint on dairy farms and explained the incentive scheme they use to motivate farmers to follow more sustainable farming practices.
“Climate check is the way we calculate the carbon footprint of the farm’s milk and farmers were curious about it, but it didn’t drive their action. Then, as soon as we started to put a financial incentive on it, they suddenly became much more interested,” Hanne Bang Bligaard explains in this video interview.