Dairy’s move towards zero emissions: Push to produce carbon neutral milk

Processors have started down the path toward producing Australia’s first carbon-neutral milk.

Farmers will need a premium of about 9 cents a litre to offset the cost of cutting their herds’ greenhouse gas emissions.

Dairy processors have taken the first steps towards rolling carbon-neutral milk onto Australia’s crowded supermarket shelves.

Western Australian processor Brownes Dairy has offered a half-cent per litre premium to farmer suppliers to complete a baseline carbon footprint assessment.

Brownes chief operating officer Marc Anderson said the WA industry wanted to lead the nation on sustainability, delivering Australia’s first carbon neutral milk.

“We have the opportunity, if processors work together, to get WA to be carbon neutral,” Mr Anderson said.

Mr Anderson said the WA dairy industry working group, representing the state’s three main processors, had developed a five-year plan to reach the carbon-neutral goal, working with farmers on energy use, cow genetics, feed sources and the use of the asparagopsis red seaweed additive to reduce methane emissions.

Farming the Sky program manager Nick d’Avoine, whose company is running red seaweed trials measuring methane emissions from 2600 cows, said farmers would need a premium of about 9 cents a litre to offset the cost of cutting their herds’ greenhouse gas emissions.

“We believe initial adopters will be price setters, rather than price takers,” Mr d’Avoine said. But he warned anyone making a carbon-neutral claim would have to prove it, by having the systems in place to measure and monitor their emissions.

Retailers are already pushing into the carbon-neutral territory, with Coles launching a carbon-neutral beef line and declaring it wants to be “Australia’s most sustainable supermarket”.

The supermarket giant is also well placed to pursue a carbon-neutral milk line, sourcing 494 million litres directly off farmers and cutting a deal to buy Saputo’s Sydney and Melbourne processing plants.

Fonterra sustainability manager Jack Holden said anyone could deliver carbon-neutral milk, by simply buying carbon credits.

But he said the real gamechanger was coming up with strategies that cut on-farm emissions at scale in a way that could be applied “to all cows, all producers”.

Mr Holden said Fonterra was already engaged in red seaweed feeding trials in Tasmania, to determine the value of the additive in reducing cows’ methane emissions and herd productivity at a commercial level.

“We will invest $45 million over the next four years in the commercialisation of methane reduction solutions,” he said. “We as an industry can be proactive, which is better than being told (what to do).”

Up until now, Coalition and Labor federal governments have shied away from implementing mandatory methane targets for livestock producers.

But that’s not the case in Europe, where the EU Commission has approved €1.5 billion for the Dutch government to buy out 3000 high nitrogen-emitting farms to curb nitrous oxide emissions, which are 265 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

The proposal led to widespread protests earlier this year, with Dutch farmers dumping manure, halting traffic and rallying outside politicians’ homes.

Anger over the buyout, which starts in July, was credited with delivering the Dutch Farmer Citizen movement, BoerBurgerBeweging, its first provincial election win in March.

A similar proposal from Ireland’s Food Vision Dairy Group to cut the nation’s dairy herd by 100,000 to reduce emissions has been dismissed by Ireland’s Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue.