The agri-food giant Danone announced Tuesday that it intends to reduce by 30% by 2030, compared to 2020, the methane emissions linked to the breeding of cows which supply its factories with fresh milk.
“We will see how we can improve practices in general on farms,” Jeanette Coombs-Lanot, spokeswoman for the group, told AFP. Among the levers: use of less-emitting breeds, optimization of diets, prolonged maintenance of cow production, capture of manure emissions to recover them as biogas, etc.
The environmental balance of cattle farming is increased by the digestion process of the cows which expel, while belching, methane: the same as town gas, whose heating power is much higher than carbon dioxide. Methane also escapes from manure.
“Danone is the first food group to set a specific goal for reducing methane emissions,” he said in a press release.
This objective is in line with the “Global methane pledge”: a hundred countries had committed at COP26 in 2021 to reducing methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030, compared to 2020.
Danone’s target covers fresh milk, purchased directly from 58,000 dairy farms in 20 countries, which accounts for 70% of its methane emissions.
It does not extend to powdered milk for baby formulas, obtained via intermediaries.
Danone says it has reduced its methane emissions by “about 14%” between 2018 and 2020.
In Morocco, where the group collects milk from very small producers, “there is a lot of progress that can be made by optimizing production”, illustrated Ms. Coombs-Lanot.
Improving the milk yield of each cow makes it possible to reduce, for equal production, the number of animals present on a farm, and therefore emissions.
Danone is also interested in innovations that promise to filter the methane emitted by cows – via a device installed on a halter – or to reduce its production at the source, thanks to food additives based on algae for example.
A report by the United Nations Environment Program pointed out in 2021 that technological solutions have only “limited potential” to significantly reduce emissions from the agricultural sector.
He first advocated changes in behavior, such as improving the management of livestock and the adoption of diets in which meat and dairy products are more discreet or even disappear.