A taste of September’s DSF Webinar

Ernesto Reyes, GDP Sector Lead for Dairy Development, provided a detailed overview on a collaborative project evaluating the role that dairy plays in terms of rural development, and how dairy contributes to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals in a social context.

The research project applied a multistakeholder approach under the umbrella of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL), together with the FAO, IFCN and IFAD. The research team took a science based and systematic approach to measure the socio-economic impact of dairy development and to provide policy makers with tools and concepts that could be used to assess the impact of dairy in their own countries.

The project initially reviewed science based evidence of the social role of dairy, collating quantitative evidence on dairy’s development impact on poverty reduction, reducing global hunger and also on increasing gender equality and empowerment. The research team then progressed to devise a dairy impact assessment tool which was tested through a number of pilots in Rwanda, Kenya, Vietnam and India. The Global Dairy Impact Report, which will be published shortly, has been based on four social domains:

• Farmers’ livelihoods,
• Direct employment along the value chain,
• Consumers’ benefits and
• Government revenue.

The evidence and data gathered so far shows some extremely positive outcomes for dairy's social impact. A Results Database tool has been developed, with data from 187 countries, which can be interrogated by country, region or milk yield to show the landscape of the socio-economic impact of dairy.

In addition, the research team are now exploring the economic elasticities through ‘what if’ scenarios and ultimately hope to have an interactive tool that individual countries can utilize to better understand the ‘value’ from a socio-economic perspective based on increasing (or decreasing) dairy industry growth.

A recording of the webinar can be found in the DSF Members area of the DSF website.

The final 2024 DSF webinar is on November 14th when we will hear from Professor Richard Dewhurst, Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA) and Head of SRUC’s Dairy Research Centre. Richard will be talking about the research component of Pathways to Dairy Net Zero (P2DNZ), which is working to identify practical pathways for dairy systems worldwide. He will explain the science that quantifies GHG emissions from global dairy and discuss the emissions profiles for the different dairy production systems, the mitigation opportunities and critically the impact the cumulative emissions for the different GHG gases have on global warming. Details of how to register to attend are on the DSF Members Area or please contact the DSF Secretariat.