2024 DSF Annual Meeting in Paris

The 11th DSF Annual meeting held in Paris saw over 70 members and dairy industry colleagues from around the world joining us in person and online for an action packed three and a half hours. The meeting was chaired by Alexander Anton, Secretary General of the European Dairy Association and DSF Governor.

DSF Director, Brian Lindsay, gave an overview of the DSF Annual Sustainability Progress 2023 calendar year reporting. DSF currently represents 52% of the global formal milk market and is reporting progress from over 1000 dairy organizations. Brian thanked members for their continuing efforts reporting especially in the new areas such as Gender and Employment across the dairy value chain and the transition to the reporting of Animal Health and Welfare Plans for the Animal Care Criteria. The report also highlights some emerging trends in milk sourcing in the emerging economies and for the second year in a row, Animal Care remains as the number one prioritised Criteria by the DSF membership.

Delegates learned that the first three Stage 1 membership pilots with emerging markets were underway, two in India and one in Zimbabwe. The meeting then heard from the CEO’s of both Indian Pilot partners, Mr Thimmappa Sura, Shreeja Mahila Milk Producer Company and Mr Jaidev Biswas, The Jharkland State Milk Producer Federation Ltd who spoke about their organisations and how they believed working with DSF on sustainability would help them progress.

DSF Chairman, Donald Moore, reviewed the positive achievements of the DSF in relation to the 2020 – 2025 Strategic plan. Efforts are now being invested in building on this solid progress to ensure the DSF remains relevant and impactful for the next 5-10 years. A consultation and review process has been implemented by the DSF Secretariat for the Governing Board to assist in the formation of the 2025 – 2030 DSF Strategy. The outcomes of this process are being shared with the DSF Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Council and discussed at this month’s joint DSF Board and ADCO meeting.

Keynote speaker, Ben Williams of Leprino Foods (UK), gave a fascinating presentation about Leprino’s program on farmer engagement and behaviour change, achieving exciting results with individual farms’ sustainability performance and ‘bottom line’ in just 12 months. Pursuing a lean management approach and the plan, do, check, adjust cycle that DSF also advocates, Ben explained how they had found that farmers needed to be taken on a “journey” and one-to-one support had been crucial in getting farmers to identify “waste” and implement change to achieve impressive economic returns. DSF have produced a case study with Leprino Foods and this is available to ALL reporting members in the DSF Members Area of the website.

The majority of the DSF annual meeting was dedicated to member focused breakout sessions. The Secretariat were delighted that five proactive members shared their stories from around the world. Breakouts covered:

• North America – Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) - Net Zero by 2050 goal
• Latin America – Consorcio Lechero, Chile - Capturing and reporting progress
• Oceania – Dairy Australia – Revisiting materiality and addressing challenges
• Europe – The Dairy Roadmap, UK – Continuous improvement with Animal Care
• Europe – Granlatte, Italy – A collaborative approach to improving biodiversity

A big thank you to our colleagues who led these sessions.

If you missed the meeting, you can view the recording in English (whole meeting including the breakout sessions), or the main plenary session in Japanese or Spanish.