What will the world look like in 2025? Across the dairy industry, many companies and local government bodies have made bold commitments to enable a leading-edge sector best to benefit the environment in the years to come.
The dairy industry across the globe is accepting the challenge to become good stewards of the environment while maintaining the industry as a globally significant source of natural nutrition. However, to welcome this challenge is no easy feat.
More than ever, consumers are demanding that the new generation of food production is committed to embracing new and bold sustainability practices and solutions while creating transparency back to the farm. Governments are committed to reducing their environmental impacts across the globe, resulting in the all too familiar situation of increased on-farm compliance, reporting, and auditing.
Farmers want and need to remain compliant, just like they want to be sustainable. The demand for recording, reporting, and proving on-farm environmental management is becoming more critical than ever. However, for farms and dairy companies, this task is immense, time-consuming, and complex.
How can dairy farmer members quantify their environmental footprint in an economically viable way?
Producers/suppliers are required to meet a broad range of standards governing key performance areas – such as waterway management, water use, carbon footprint, land, nutrient management, and animal welfare. The specific requirements from each country, region, and state will differ depending on local climate and ecosystem needs. However, one thing in common across the dairy industry is apparent - expectations from the public, processors and government require greater accountability from farmers regarding how resources such as land, water, and people will be managed.
While the dairy industry is rising to these expectations, it does not come without its challenges. For example, in New Zealand dairy, there is a focus on reducing GHGs and improving water quality. Legislation governs these concerns, which requires farmers to "develop a farm-specific plan to manage and reduce these emissions through farm management improvements." Therefore, farmers must prove to third parties and dairy companies that they are taking considerable actions to reduce their emissions.
This requirement is becoming an essential practice across the world within the dairy industry. For example, the US Dairy industry has created and is now complying with the National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) program. The EU dairy industry complies with similar programs, such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
Demands around compliance have never been greater. The need to capture and record data regarding on-farm environmental management and GHGs emissions demonstrating a dairy farm is compliant is becoming an essential task.
However, quantifying and recording this data to prove compliance on-farm is a mammoth undertaking. It often involves complexity coupled with the challenge of finding a way to efficiently share and make visible data to dairy companies and auditors in a way that makes sense.
What is the best way forward to record this data in a way that makes sense while satisfying the demand for compliance and sustainability?
Today, many farms do not struggle to be connected—the arrival of the smartphone, apps, sensors, and wireless connection results in a data-rich society. The challenge lies in collecting, harvesting, and storing this data and turning it into auditable and operational proof of farm compliance in a way that makes sense. So, what is the answer?
The ultimate solution is to have a centralized platform to collect, present, and analyze all this data in a form that demonstrates dairy farmers are compliant and is easily accessible to dairy companies and auditors.
This solution is achieved with MADCAP's Farmer / Producers & Field Service Mobile app. It centralizes all the dairy farm's data flow, with all data from the farm linking up to the rest of the milk supply chain. Thus, dairy companies, critical third parties, auditors, and legislative bodies can hassle-free access, unlike other apps, which are often disparate, siloed, and do not share this data directly into the same system creating a data mess. A common issue faced is providers creating ‘solutions’ that move data to the cloud and claim it has solved it. However, this only moves your mess around. For a solution to tackle this challenge successfully, it needs to be more innovative.
For example, this app has everything in one place in an easy-to-use format that makes communication with the dairy companies much easier for dairy farmers, and it's conveniently available at any time in their pocket to update due to its offline functionality.
The dairy companies provide them with unbiased real-time data to see actionable insights regarding on-farm compliance. It improves trust and communication between processors and farmers due to the centralized platform and ease of sharing data.
For dairy companies such as Westland, it is an essential tool that helps reassure parties that its environmental goals and high standards are met. The app provides valuable farm management information for the producers with a fully auditable trail proving that they are leading the way with environmental management.
The ease of MADCAP's Farmer / Producers & Field Service Mobile app allows farmers and dairy processors alike to spend less time collecting the data. It also removes the pain of sharing data between siloed and disparate systems, such as those created by other systems. Instead, it seamlessly shares this data in a way that allows farmers and dairy processes to spend more time on adding value to their businesses and meeting their long-term sustainable commitments.
MADCAP's Farmer / Producers & Field Service Mobile app is a crucial tool that allows dairy farms and companies alike to achieve their sustainability goals, to become good stewards of the environment while maintaining the industry as a globally significant source of natural nutrition.