Guest Columns

Perspective:
Dairy Sustainability

Failure isn’t an option when it comes to dairy sustainability

Mike Durkin

Mike Durkin is president and CEO of Leprino Foods Co., Denver. He also is a board member for the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy and previously chaired its U.S. Dairy Stewardship Commitment Task Force. He is a guest columnist for this week’s issue of Cheese Market News®.

One of my favorite quotes is borrowed from Gene Kranz, a NASA flight director who helped return the Apollo 13 crew safely to Earth in 1970: “Failure is not an option.”

I think of those words often as Leprino Foods and the U.S. dairy industry overall navigate our own mission focused on environmental stewardship.

Years ago, sustainability was mostly a “nice to do” for us. In fact, it was not included among our company’s top five operational pillars. Instead, it was a subset under a pillar with few measurable targets.

Fast forward to today. “Nice to do” shifted to “should do,” and now it is a “must do.” This is not only true for Leprino Foods but for our industry, especially if we are to remain relevant and meet growing expectations to produce food in a way that is good for the planet, people and animals. To that end, showing we are committed to these areas is good for business. In addition, many of the things we do to help the environment also have the potential to lower our operating costs, either now or in the long term.

I credit my predecessor, Larry Jensen, for establishing Leprino Foods’ focus on sustainability in 2013. We published our first sustainability report that year, which focused on our goals of reducing our water and electrical use and our efforts to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

We saw the signs that sustainable practices mattered more and more. And it wasn’t just being driven by consumers — it also was coming from our customers who want to convey the story of dairy’s supply chain commitment to sustainability to the people who buy their products.

I also credit the checkoff-founded Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, which unites the industry in a precompetitive fashion and made sustainability a top priority so we — as U.S. dairy — can move forward with our collective story of commitment and progress. I had the honor of serving as the initial chair of the Innovation Center’s Stewardship Commitment Task Force and saw firsthand the power we hold when we all come together. I won’t lie, there were instances when it wasn’t always easy, but the majority of the time we were in unity. We worked through issues to get where we needed to be.

Talking about our environmental commitment is one thing, but as we evolved our journey, we began pushing
for more — and we needed data to prove we were doing the right things and making progress. Our desire to lead with data and proof points was our “put up or shut up” moment. In a world that has enough anti-dairy rhetoric, this would be our opportunity to take control of the narrative and no longer deal with a theoretical approach as we once did.

Two pivotal developments came from the Innovation Center:

• The creation of the U.S. Dairy Stewardship Commitment in 2018 that now consists of 34 cooperatives and processors representing 75% of U.S. milk production. The Processor Reporting Tool resulted from the Commitment and allows companies such as ours to demonstrate and document how we responsibly produce milk and dairy products, reporting on key priorities such as animal care, environment, food safety and community engagement.

• The announcement of the 2050 Environmental Stewardship Goals to achieve greenhouse gas neutrality, optimize water use and improve water quality by 2050.

Our industry’s transparency was clearly demonstrated with the September release of the 2020 U.S. Dairy Sustainability Report, which showed progress made in 2019 and 2020 against the U.S. Dairy Stewardship Commitment. The report included the first aggregation of dairy processing data from the tool that gives us a baseline to build upon and grow from.

Despite the pandemic challenges of the last year, our industry continued to prioritize social responsibility, helping people and communities thrive, while advancing sustainable practices and becoming an environmental solution. These are the types of assurances that our consumers and customers are seeking.
I have witnessed a positive shift when it comes to sustainability and our environmental commitments. I know it’s part of our team’s culture, and there have been some learnings along the way.

First, this work must be “leader-led,” and that starts with me. Being involved with the Innovation Center and its many programs shows our commitment both internally and externally. It’s a huge benefit to get people on board at Leprino Foods, and it shows our employees and customers that we are taking this seriously.

Second, we have elevated sustainability to a key focus area and created a working group task force. We now have high-level team members working on our sustainability strategy and a director-level person who has oversight of this work, ensuring it is integrated throughout our business.

Last, while many big-picture efforts happen at our corporate level, there is lots that can happen locally at our plants. The more you get buy-in across the board, the more you will achieve success across the entire company.

We know that the expectations placed upon us will only continue to grow, and we’re far from the only industry facing this way of doing business. It’s not always going to be easy. We all face cost-benefit challenges, and some of the technology we need to progress is not yet available. Yes, companies need to invest. But to be successful in the long term, we must have innovation and policies that keep pace with marketplace needs so it’s financially viable for us.

Nonetheless, I’m bullish on dairy’s chances to secure a bright future. I look at other aspects of agriculture, and even other industries, and I see that dairy is — and has been for some time — a leader. We are not playing from behind.

For dairy, failure has never been an option.

CMN

The views expressed by CMN’s guest columnists are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of Cheese Market News®.

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