Dairy Farmers Have Incredible Sustainability Story, and Consumers Need to Hear It
AHoard’s Dairyman webinar welcomed multiple guests for a panel on dairy and sustainability to show just what dairy farmers have been doing across the globe in the name of environmental conservation and sustainable food supply. They said sustainability includes a lot more than just the environment, though – it’s also about building a sustainable business model for alternative conservation practices.
Guests included Robin White, professor of animal and poultry sciences at Virginia Tech; Marilyn Hershey, dairy farmer and board chair at Dairy Management Inc; Jamie Vander Molen, vice president of sustainability issues and outreach at manure management company Newtrient; and Chris Wolf, agriculture economist at Cornell University.
"Dairy has such an incredible story when we’re talking about sustainability," White said. "The environmental aspects of dairy sustainability go well beyond just carbon. They include things like our interaction with water, soil, land, biodiversity, ecosystem services. Incorporating all of those elements of environmentalism into our definitions and quantifications of sustainability is really the direction we’re headed."