One of the world’s largest food producers is teaming up with a New Zealand milk supplier to help farmers cut carbon.
Nestlé Global and Synlait Milk are spending millions of dollars on tools to reduce on-farm emissions in the hope that they meet with own climate targets.
Funding will be provided over seven years for effluent management systems, emissions-friendly feed options, advanced soil testing, alternative fertilisers, and tree planting.
Nestlé Global Chief Procurement Officer Patricia Stroup said daily is both the single biggest ingredient by volume and the largest source of Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for around 21% of the company’s total emissions.
“None of us can do this alone. Knowing this drives us to find new ways of working together, and means we need to collaborate with our dairy suppliers to adopt new ways to reduce emissions, and with farmers to create plans for climate, methane, and regenerative agriculture,” said Stroup.
Synlait CEO Grant Watson said the partnership aims to reduce the cost of implementation and accelerate farmer adoption of emissions-reducing tools.
“It’s leveraging technologies that are available in market right now and will expand over time to include emerging technologies as they become available. This kind of partnership also opens potential new opportunities to work together in other areas, and we look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with Nestlé,” said Watson.
Rowan Michael is a farmer at Northbank in Canterbury and said he welcomes the move.
He has implemented several environmental changes since taking over the family business two years ago, thanks in part to the agreement.
He said he hopes to get funding so he can ditch the diesel generator “and get a more efficient electric pump in there, so that would be bloody good”.
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