Dairgold's Commitment to Sustainability

Dairgold’s Commitment to Sustainability. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

We have been talking a lot about how small ag producers here in the northwest have taken steps to improve their sustainability. But what about big ag business? Steve Rowe, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Darigold says they made a very conscious decision to move in that direction.

ROWE: For one the real driver originally for many of us was a little two-fold. One we were getting questions from important customers. Large consumer product customers were getting questions from their customers about everything from animal welfare to energy use to recycling to really the economics behind dairy products and when we looked at it from that standpoint - from a sustainability standpoint which is really that triple bottom line viewpoint, social, economic and environment; we really realized both as an industry and then here within Darigold we have a great story to tell.

Rowe says they spent about a year and a half on an internal study.

ROWE: We developed a report in 2010 that captured what we had learned about our organization both good and what our challenges will be. Things like CO2 generation, how our economics really work and affect the state and local communities, our water use, our animal wellbeing things like that. We have a series of factors, key performance indicators that we captured in our 2010 report.

Darigold is obviously a major player in the dairy industry here in the northwest so impacts of their sustainable programs are long reaching.

ROWE: The biggest impact really has been proof of the realization that the story is a good story. The dairymen, they really are very good at animal care, taking care of the land and they’re deeply invested in their local communities. And when you embark on a self analysis there’s always some concern that - what are we going to find. And overall we are so happy and so proud of the dairy industry in the northwest.

For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.???www.harvestcleanenergy.org