DSF Members meeting in Istanbul
DSF Members meeting in Istanbul
We were delighted to see 55 DSF Members from 16 different countries gathered in Istanbul for the annual DSF Members meeting. Delegates heard from Dr Esben Larsen of the World Resources Institute, on the Future of Livestock Production. The interactive session on the challenges and opportunities for dairy sustainability facilitated by Torsten Hemme identified "Public perception" of dairy as the greatest challenge and the key opportunity for dairy is the dairy nutrition story.
Many members also commented how valuable they found the time talking and meeting with other like-minded people from around the globe. The session coordinated by Dr. David Nation, CEO of Dairy Australia and DSF Governor, provided the membership with the opportunity to share their thoughts on the value of the DSF in aligning and connecting the dairy sector to enable a coordinated approach to continuous improvement. It was emphasised how valuable the DSF is as a reporting and convening framework for the sector.
DSF members also had the opportunity to hear from six of the DSF Advisory Council (ADCO) on how they saw the future for dairy and the needs of the sector from a sustainability perspective. Facilitated by Dr. Judith Bryans, President of the International Dairy Federation and DSF Governor, the ADCO input provided perspectives from a number of different angles, economic, biodiversity, social and nutrition as examples. This session certainly demonstrated the breadth of the topics that are positioned under the "sustainability umbrella".
An important part of the day was the presentation of the first draft of the progress reporting against the 7 DSF indicators implemented in 2018/19. Already the membership was able to see where progress has been made over the past year and how strategic messages can be generated using the aggregated membership data.
From 2020 we will be expecting members data from your priority work areas on all 11 Criteria.
Presentations will be available for DSF members to download from the extranet (Members area of the website) shortly.
The 2019 Members meeting was the first opportunity to conduct a joint DSF Governors and Advisory Council meeting. The meeting predominantly focused on the DSF 2020 - 2025 Strategy, drawing on the first year's Indicator Metric reporting and the outputs of the preceding DSF Members Meeting. This will be the first publicly available DSF Strategy.