NEW ZEALAND PUSHES AHEAD WITH FIRST NETZERO DAIRY FARM GOAL

By Chris McCullough

AS NUMEROUS COUNTRIES PROGRESS TOWARD NET-ZERO DAIRY FARMING, one farm in New Zealand is already well advanced on the journey to cutting emissions.

While most countries, including Canada, are aiming for 2050 as their goal for cutting all carbon emissions produced on the farms, the New Zealand farm is striving to get there earlier.

The project farm is owned by Fonterra, a global dairy co-op, and is located beside the processor’s Whareroa site, in the Taranaki region, on New Zealand’s North Island.

The 290-hectare farm is being run by the Dairy Trust Taranaki in a five-year project with partners Fonterra and Nestlé.

In a news release, Fonterra CEO Miles Hurrell says the collaboration will help both Fonterra and Nestlé accelerate progress toward their own greenhouse gas emission goals.

Cows

“We hope that by initiating this kind of work we can have farmers talking to farmers, demonstrating practically what works and helping to build understanding of the implications this change may bring for their own operations.”

— Margaret Stuart, Director, Corporate Affairs and Sustainability, Nestlé

Jason Rolfe, General Manager of Operations at Dairy Trust Taranaki, says the farming system in New Zealand means cows are outside on pasture year-round. The Whareroa farm is run as a commercial research farm and supplies its milk to Fonterra.

“We currently have 550 Friesian cross breed cows and rear around 90 to 100 replacement calves each year on the drystock part of the farm before going to a grazer from one to two years of age,” he says. “The cows are milked on a 60-unit rotary parlour with automatic cup removers.”

With an initial deadline to cut emissions 30 per cent by mid-2027, the farm is using a number of methods to reduce carbon.

Tech Talk

“Animal Green House Gas (GHG) emissions are assessed using the New Zealand GHG Inventory methodology, while the AgResearch Life Cycle Assessment model framework is used to qualify all other GHG emissions associated with land use and from the production and use of all farm inputs,” Rolfe says. This follows the internationally accepted methods from the International Dairy Federation guidelines (IDF2015).

Manure is stored in effluent ponds and in some cases, applied to land as fertilizer. Spreading effluent onto land is an effective way of recycling nutrients back into the farm system rather than losing them to the environment.

The Net-Zero farm partnership will aim to reduce on-farm total GHG emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, by adopting more emission-efficient farming techniques.

“It is also possible to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide already in the air via carbon removals, such as tree planting on the farm itself,” Rolfe adds.

The project farm is currently gathering data and is welcoming farmers onto the site to show them what is being done.

“We wanted to undertake this work on a dairy farm that Fonterra owned and was representative of a typical New Zealand dairy farm so that we were able to make changes across the board,” Rolfe says.

Whareroa farm was already being used for research purposes and met the criteria of being a representative farm.

“Dairy Trust Taranaki also runs three other farms with one of these already showing positive results from system changes to reduce environmental impact. We look forward to sharing our first year’s results later in 2023,” says Rolfe adding producers regularly visit the farm showing “a fair amount of interest and good support.”

Partnerships

Affirming the partnership’s mission of examining all aspects of farm operations, Fonterra’s Anne Douglas, who supports the farmer-facing part of the co-op, which helps ensure business quality it takes for farmers to produce it.

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646-2062 success, says everything, including the adoption of new technologies such as electric motorbikes, pasture and crop changes, an increased use of trees, breeding program changes, and a review of energy and water use, are open to scrutiny.

Lessons learned and activities will be shared through open days with farmers. “Ultimately, this is about giving our farmers the ability to use proven techniques and technologies to reduce emissions on their own farms.

“Of course, the practices and solutions delivered must be economically viable, practical and available to all farmers to adopt. It’s important to remember that for any game-changing solution to be successful, it needs to be good for the environment, good for the farmer, good for the cow, and good for the milk.”

The need to address climate change requires collaboration and action from business, communities and government. “None of us can wait,” says Margaret Stuart, Director, Corporate Affairs and Sustainability at Nestlé.

The dairy industry, like every other industry, needs to accelerate transformation, she says.

“That’s where our partnership with Fonterra comes in. Together, we aim to develop a commercially viable Net-Zero carbon dairy farm. This will require improvements right across farm operations to accelerate emission reduction and boost carbon storage, all while maintaining the excellent animal welfare standards New Zealand dairy farmers are known for.

“More broadly, projects like this, which aim to explore ways for farms to reduce emissions, are an important way for Nestlé to co-develop pathways to reduce emissions which will be accepted by farmers and wider stakeholders.”

Stuart says change must take place in different geographies, acknowledging that dairy farms differ greatly worldwide.

“We hope that by initiating this kind of work we can have farmers talking to farmers, demonstrating practically what works and helping to build understanding of the implications this change may bring for their own operations,” she says.

DFO is dedicated to helping Ontario producers navigate the Net-Zero commitment through funding for related research.

Right now, for example, researchers are looking at the effects of grazing behaviour and pasture management on dairy cow health and production, and we’re also looking at wrap and silage covering made from biomaterials to reduce the use of plastics. These are just two projects of many. We know that GHG emissions from Canadian dairy farms has decreased an average of one per cent per year since 1990 and that between 2011 and 2016, water use decreased six per cent and land use by 11 per cent. At the same time, milk production has increased 13 per cent through improvements in animal nutrition, genetics and housing. These are important gains and they’ve all been made through the dedication of our researchers and producers to the environment and to our communities.