1. You are here: Front page
  2. News & Insight

Research to help you produce stronger sustainability reports

Everyone is under pressure to show that they are making an effort to improve their sustainability. No one can avoid that pressure because larger organisations now have to report in line with the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. As a result, every supplier and organisation down the food value-chain will also have to provide hard data. Luckily help is on the way. We have teamed up with a range of Danish Universities and government agencies to research and document how more digestible forage solutions also can have a positive environmental benefit.
Research to help you produce stronger sustainability reports

Digestible forage grasses help to reduce climate impacts

The EU’s new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has implications for all industries across Europe, including farming. The CSRD mandates larger companies to report on their sustainability targets, and the reported data allows people to calculate, for example, the total environmental footprint of a glass of milk at every stage from seed production to the sale of the final bottle of milk. 
Consumers and politicians are particularly concerned about the environmental footprint of the dairy and meat industry. To allay these fears and to show that forage grasses are more sustainable than many people imagine, Arla and Danish Crown have got together with DLF, Danish Agro, DLG, and the Universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus to demonstrate their environmental credentials. The project aims to highlight the climatic benefits of using varieties that are highly digestible. The project will also help us understand what the industry can do to reduce emissions even further.

Reducing the source of 83% of farming’s greenhouse-gas emissions

The forage-grass research project, known as ClimateReach, runs for four years and has received 21m DKK (€2.8m) in funding from AgriFoodTure, an agency of the Danish national Innovation Fund. Researchers will be looking at the two biggest sources of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from farming. They are (1) methane produced by the enteric fermentation of feed (accounts for 50% of the industry’s GHG emissions) and (2) nitrous oxide produced by the nitrification of surplus nitrogen in the field (accounts for 33% of the industry’s GHG emissions). The project will also investigate how much extra carbon could be stored if farmers plant deep-rooted perennial crops instead of shallow-rooted annuals.

Working on shared goals makes farming better for everyone

Can we achieve all our goals in one variety? Probably not. But we hope to be able to give farmers and their customers a helping hand by devising mixtures and recommending varieties that are scientifically proven to have a positive climate effect. That information can then go straight into your and your customers’ Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) reports. You’ll have the data to meet the auditing required for sustainability reporting.

The outcome of our research go wider, extending to retailers and food manufacturers. Food companies will know which mixtures and varieties to recommend to their supplying farmers for optimal food and forage production. Zero methane, zero nitrous oxide, and plenty of carbon sequestration – is it possible? We don’t yet know, but that is our goal. If it’s also your goal, we’re really working on our shared industry goal.

 

Return to overview