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DMI adds environment to priority areas

A dairy checkoff leader says there needs to be a greater commitment to telling the environmental story of dairy.

Executive VP of Global Environmental Strategy Krysta Harden, former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, says she wants to clarify what farmers are doing to protect the environment and why.

“Is it good for their community, is it good for the planet? —Those are the kinds of questions that more and more dairy farmers are being asked.”

She says the industry will soon be releasing how dairy has reduced emissions in the last decade when it first committed to cutting its carbon footprint by 25% by 2020.

“We have a lot of our young folks who are coming back to the dairies who say, ‘I feel this is my responsibility to explain the industry better.”

Harden says a gallon of milk has a 60 percent smaller carbon footprint compared to 70 years ago and contributes only two percent to GHG in the U.S.