We recognize that for sustainability to make sense for farmers, it cannot focus solely on environmental and social impacts – it must also be economically additive for farmers.

It’s often been said that sustainability is a journey and not a destination. It is an ongoing process of learning, adaptation and improvement.

As we navigate this important time in our industry’s history, the dairy checkoff and others across the value chain and academia remain committed to being a source of credible information for farmers.

Together, we can build a resilient and sustainable dairy sector that meets the challenges of today while laying the groundwork for a brighter tomorrow.

Essential sustainability terms for farmers

It’s likely farmers have seen various terms associated with environmental sustainability and may wonder what some mean. One new tool to help cut through the clutter is the checkoff-created Dairy Conservation Navigator, a portal designed to provide farm advisers and others with reliable information on environmental practices and technologies.

By providing a tool that is practical and rooted in science-based information, we hope to make it easier for the dairy community to learn about practices that may enhance their long-term sustainability and support the industry’s broader environmental goals.

When checkoff engages in sustainability, this is the way we think about and describe some of the key terms that you may be hearing about:

Climate change – A long-term change in the weather patterns that has come to define Earth’s local and regional climates. These changes pose threats such as increased drought, flooding, wildfires and other erratic weather that impacts society, including dairy production. Climate change is driven primarily by the increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs) in Earth’s atmosphere associated with human activities.

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) – Gases that trap heat by absorbing radiation from the sun. Increasing levels of GHGs in the atmosphere can lead to detrimental changes to Earth’s climate and weather patterns. Examples of GHGs are:

• Carbon dioxide (CO₂): Carbon dioxide is a long-lived GHG that is released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels and solid waste are burned, as part of certain chemical reactions and when land is tilled. CO₂ is removed from the atmosphere when it is absorbed by plants (or the ocean).
• Methane (CH₄): Methane is a potent but short-lived GHG released due to the production and transport of coal, natural gas and oil. In dairy production, methane emissions are primarily associated with enteric fermentation and anaerobic manure storage.
• Nitrous oxide (N₂O): Nitrous oxide is a long-lived GHG with a higher warming potential than carbon dioxide and methane. Sources of nitrous oxide emissions in agriculture are primarily associated with land application of manure-based and synthetic fertilizers.
• Other: There are other GHGs including fluorinated gases, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons that come from industrial processes, transportation and electricity transmission.

Global warming potential (GWP) – A metric that estimates the relative atmospheric warming impact of a GHG. The impact is defined over a fixed period of time, such as 20 or 100 years. By multiplying the emissions of GHGs such as N₂O and CH₄ by appropriate GWP metrics (i.e., correction factors), these gases can be made equivalent to CO₂ (i.e., CO₂-equivalents), which is required for adding up different types of GHG emissions to estimate a total.

Greenhouse gas neutrality – Occurs when GHG emissions are balanced with GHG removals. It can be achieved by reducing total GHG emissions in combination with removals such as enhanced carbon sequestration. Because this approach balances across all gas types, the GHGs must first be made equivalent to each other using the GWP metrics.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) – An approach to estimating the environmental impacts associated with a product or business. There are globally accepted frameworks that define what should or should not be included in an LCA. The main strengths of an LCA lie in its ability to provide a holistic assessment of production processes, in terms of resource use and environmental impacts, enabling businesses to identify effective strategies to mitigate negative environmental impacts.

Product carbon footprint – The total amount of GHG emissions associated with farming operations or a product during its life cycle. This may include emissions associated with inputs, materials and resources, operations, packaging, distribution, consumption and end-of-life recovery and disposal (i.e., cradle-to-grave).

However, the carbon footprint may only extend to the point where the product leaves the company (i.e., cradle-to-gate). It usually is expressed in tons of CO₂ equivalents (i.e., absolute emissions) or in pounds or kilograms of CO₂ equivalents per unit of product (i.e., emissions intensity or carbon intensity).

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A company’s carbon footprint can be calculated using similar methods to a product LCA, but instead of assessing a single product, a company footprint must consider the GHG emissions the business produces directly or indirectly across all of its activities.

 

Scope 1, 2, 3 (direct and indirect) emissions – A company’s GHG emissions can be divided into:

• Scope 1: Direct emissions controlled by the company. For example, in the airline industry, Scope 1 emissions would include the aviation fuel consumed during flight.
• Scope 2: Indirect emissions that are not owned by the company but which occur as a result of the company’s direct activities. The best example is electricity. The company has operational control over whether the lights are on or off, but the emissions occur off-site where the electricity is generated.
• Scope 3: All other indirect emissions not covered in Scope 2. This includes all of the upstream emissions that occurred before the company had operational control over a process or product. For a cheese manufacturer, this would include the GHG emissions to create the milk the company purchased. It can include emissions that occur after the cheesemaker’s products leave the plant, like those at the grocery store or when consumers dispose of packaging (i.e., downstream emissions).