DSF Communities of Interest

Both Animal Care and GHG Emissions Communities of Interest (CoI) have recently gathered feedback from their group members about their first year of meetings. Feedback has been positive on what the groups have covered and also constructive in informing future meeting topic shortlists.

This month the DSF’s GHG Emissions Community heard about a group of successful pilot supply chain sustainability projects with a GHG reduction and farmer focus taking place in the USA. The initiative came about from the desire of farmer-led groups to quantify their sustainability efforts.  Lauren Brey, MD of Farmers for Sustainable Food (FSF) outlined their collaborative, industry-supported effort to promote and support farmer-led solutions to today’s environmental challenges.  Doug Thomas from Houston Engineering Inc., provided an overview of the results to date. Initial data analysis demonstrates a 15% reduction in GHG emissions, coupled with an increase in crop productivity, an 18% increase in water quality scores and a 15% reduction in energy use.  Jim Winn, dairy farmer from Wiota, Wisconsin, who has been a leader, implementing practices such as low-disturbance manure injection, cover crops and rotations etc, provided a farmer’s perspective of being involved in the project.  Dairy farmers are looking for answers and want to be part of the solution to challenges as well as taking responsibility for their contributions to the environment.  He added that the farmer group felt that the changes being made to their farming practices were having a positive impact in a number of areas and they were now able to quantify this.

NOTICE - We will be starting the Biodiversity Community of Interest in early June with input from DSF Advisory Council Member WWF.  If you are a DSF Implementing or Aggregating Member and would like to be sent details of all or any of the CoI meetings, please contact the DSF Secretariat.