THE LAND

Improving protection of nature and biodiversity

Our farmer owners do more than care for the cows that produce our raw milk. Together, they manage tens of thousands of acres of land across Europe. And in every field or meadow lies opportunities to protect and improve biodiversity and soil health.

Caring for soil

The fields you pass when driving through the countryside should be rich in soil microbes, worms and nutrients – at least they are if the soil is healthy. We know that farming is part of the problem when it comes to declining biodiversity. But working intelligently with soil can help improve this and increase the crop yield. It can also improve how much carbon the soil absorbs from the atmosphere and the crops’ resistance to extreme weather. That’s why some of our farmers are part of soil health tests, where they dig up soil to check how healthy it is or send it off for analysis.

Caring for soil

Managing the grasslands

Grazing isn’t only great for the cows. If well managed, the land can get an abundance of benefits as well. Therefore our farmer owners are incentivized to adopt farm management and grazing practices that research shows can increase carbon-sequestration into the soil. Together with other industry leaders we are working on an aligned methodology on this to highlight the role carbon sequestration can play in lowering carbon footprint on farm.

Our farmer owners also manage their land by rotating their crop fields. This aims to ensure a better balance of nutrients for the soil and support biodiversity above and below ground. However, it is still too early to fully conclude on the scientific impact of this, so we keep exploring.

Managing the grasslands

Boosting biodiversity

Flowers, plants, bees, worms, and birds. The more the merrier! Increasing biodiversity is key to increasing ecosystem resilience and because of farming’s negative impact, we have a responsibility to improve. That’s why we reward farmers with a higher milk price if they have permanent grasslands, perform soil samples or other biodiversity activities. Opportunity for change is literally at our farmer owners’ feet.

Boosting biodiversity

Exploring regenerative farming

Improving soil health. Increasing biodiversity. Using cows to manage grassland. And increasing carbon capture into the soil. All these activities are often considered part of what is called regenerative agriculture. But there’s no universally agreed definition of what the regenerative farming system is. We want to do our part in changing that.

Handpicked test-farms are helping us explore, test, and analyse regenerative dairy farming techniques. Because gaining new understanding and adapting our methods will help us reduce the farms’ impact on the environment and climate.

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Exploring regenerative farming

SBTN: Analysing our impacts on nature

As a step in Leading Sustainable Dairy Arla has used the Science Based Targets Network framework (and got it validated by the Accountability Accelerator*) to analyse our impacts on nature to further understand how to prioritise our efforts in the best way.

The conclusions from the study confirm our current focus areas of the Green Ambition is in line with science-based approaches.

*Currently going through the last stage of publication; see validation steps here.