In a room filled with dairy producers, processors and customers, farmer Mitch Breunig looked around and announced, “I’m really impressed with how many people care about sustainability. … Everyone in this room is here because of the dairy cow, and improving the dairy cow is going to be the path to make this sustainability journey come together.”
Breunig, of Mystic Valley Dairy LLC in Wisconsin, was one of 40 dairy producers in attendance at the U.S. Dairy Sustainability Alliance fall meeting Nov. 19 in Minneapolis. He was joined alongside individuals who are part of the dairy value chain – representing companies and organizations, including dairy farms – to discuss current progress and opportunities to advance sustainability in the industry.
The meeting welcomed farmer perspectives and open-floor discussions on a variety of topics, including carbon premium initiatives, enteric methane emissions and financing sustainability projects, among others. The daylong event also featured innovative tools available or in development aimed at improving operations. Those included consumer insights, the Farmers Assuring Responsible Management Environmental Stewardship Program, the Dairy Conservation Navigator, financial models for climate mitigation and a materiality assessment of U.S. dairy.
Dairy farmer Mitch Breunig addresses attendees at the U.S. Dairy Sustainability Alliance fall meeting Nov. 19 in Minneapolis. Breunig was one of 40 producers who participated in the event. Photo by Jenn Coyne.
Valley Queen, Drumgoon Dairy talk carbon premiums
For the last five years, Valley Queen Cheese Factory has worked with 40 farms that supply milk to monitor and report inputs using a third-party certifier, Ever.Ag. The reports have helped the processor implement a sustainability premium program for dairy farmers based on their carbon footprint.
“If you can’t manage what you can’t measure, you also can’t manage what you can’t measure accurately,” said Abbie Cox Beckerink, senior director and sustainability co-lead with Ever.Ag. “That’s what our process is. We’re trying to measure, but we’re trying to measure as accurately as possible.”
David Elliott agreed.
“You can spend a little time comparing [reports] to what your eyes are telling you, and you can come up with an answer if you’re making progress or not for yourself,” said Elliott of Drumgoon Dairy in South Dakota. “Also, it shows up in a commodity, and incentive in the commodity goes to the products we consume. I think showing that, or showing the pathway for that, is critical to seeing how those in agriculture care about sustainability.”
For the processor, having farmers participate in a program where a farm’s carbon footprint is accurately reported with high-quality data results in satisfied customers.
“I can rest at night knowing that what we’re saying is valid,” said Evan Grong, dairy ingredients sales manager at Valley Queen Cheese Factory. “… Rather than sharing average milkshed data points, it’s us saying, ‘We can offer you X pounds of product with a Y footprint.’ And we can stand behind that, guaranteed.”
Grong went on to discuss opportunities with this data available, including premiums, but also new markets. He announced that beginning Jan. 1, 2025, the processor would implement a milk sustainability premium for the footprint of milk.
Elliott reminded the audience there are many facets of sustainability.
“Sustainability shouldn’t all be about efficiency,” he said. “It’s also striving to use as little inputs to make as much milk. That’s good business practice, regardless. There are thin margins that we deal with as a dairy farm, and these modifiers could be your profit for the year. … Those things matter to the industry, to agriculture in general.”
Crothers stresses collaboration for financing practices
On the tail of the release of the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) “Financing climate dairy solutions” report earlier in the month, dairy farmer Alice Crothers joined Holly Jones, Agropur; Maggie Monast, EDF; and Mary Morgan, Compeer Financial to share the barriers present for on-farm conservation projects and how producers, lenders and processors can collaborate more effectively for better solutions in the dairy community.
Holly Jones speaks on the financial barriers dairy producers face when implementing on-farm conservation projects during the U.S. Dairy Sustainability Alliance fall meeting Nov. 19 in Minneapolis. Jones was joined by Maggie Monast (from left), Mary Morgan and Alice Crothers on the panel. Photo by Jenn Coyne.
“There are a lot of farmers in my boat, which is that we want to do these projects, but we can’t do these projects alone and we need largely financial partnerships to be able to pull them off,” said Crothers of Long Green Farms in Maryland.
The Crothers family received a grant to cover the installation of an anaerobic digester. The challenges were the dollars available and when in relation to the timeline of the project and stipulations of the grant. They eventually found a lender with conditions that aligned with the farm’s needs.
“We were willing to ask a lot of questions and keep looking,” Crothers said. “But I also know that I’m not alone in this space. They ask, ‘Why are so many farmers turning down projects?’ The number one answer is for funding.”
Discussion followed with Jones, Monast and Morgan recognizing Crothers’ experience and stressing the greater need for funding options.
“People are very excited about working on these projects,” Jones said. “They spend a lot of time applying for grants … there’s nothing missing in terms of willpower and persistence, but it’s the financial hurdles that get in the way.”
The EDF report highlighted three key findings: The current approach to financing dairy climate solutions is unscalable and cumbersome, financial models must be designed to overcome the financial barriers to adoption faced by farmers, and collaboration is essential to finance dairy climate solutions at scale. The report also reflected eight models for financing, including sustainability-linked loans, a linked loan with blended finance, equity investments and others.
The full report can be found here.
“The dairy sector has really been ahead of the game in creating sustainability goals, programs, trying to figure out how to make that happen,” said Monast, who co-authored the EDF report. “The ag finance sector has not had that same level of mobilization. … It’s really only now that we have the ability to do this work that we’ve been doing over the past year to get together, to talk about the problems, to figure out how we can come together.”
The fall meeting was preceded by optional pre-conference industry tours throughout the Twin Cities area, followed by the two-day Sustainable Agriculture Summit, which delved further into sustainability in agriculture on a grander scale.
