Members projects

The dairy sector is deeply embedded in Dutch society and is an important economic player, with 20,000 dairy farmers and 10,000 employees working for the dairy companies. The Dutch dairy sector wants to maintain and strengthen its top position internationally, while realising any further growth in a climate-neutral way. To achieve this, the Dutch Federation of Agriculture and Horticulture (LTO) and the Dutch Dairy Association (NZO) joined forces in 2008 to launch the Sustainable Dairy Chain initiative and Friesland Campina now jointly invests 250 million euros in sustainability every year.

The initiative has formulated ambitious goals to achieve the sustainable production of dairy products. For a start, by 2020 we want to be energy-neutral and lead the world in sustainability (environment, animal health, cattle feed and animal welfare). And we want to be using 100 percent sustainable soya and 100 percent sustainable palm oil. These targets apply to the entire dairy chain, from the primary businesses up to an including the processing industry.

FrieslandCampina's own targets are in line with those
of the Sustainable Dairy Chain. For example, FrieslandCampina's new strategy, entitled "Route2020", states that the company will realise climate-neutral growth throughout the chain. FrieslandCampina aims to achieve this by working together with dairy farmers and chain partners to improve energy efficiency, reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and stimulate the production of sustainable energy on dairy farms.

To that aim, FrislandCampina has just started a project on monitoring of sustainability on dairy farms. The idea is to provide farmers with online tools to assess the opportunities for improvements in one or more of the 3 topics and to assist them with practical advice and to offer them a benchmark against the average or 10% best achievements of their colleagues. On sector level this will gradually result in a bottom up collection of data to show the progress the chain is making as a whole.