Milking the Planet

How Big Dairy is heating up the planet and hollowing rural communities
IATP’s latest report, Milking the Planet: How Big Dairy is heating up the planet and hollowing rural communities, reveals that the total combined greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the world’s largest 13 dairy corporations rose by 11% in just two years (2015-2017).

As the global dairy industry expands and scales up into new territories, dairying is disintegrating into larger operations controlled by a handful of big dairy processors. Simultaneously, Big Dairy’s GHG emissions are increasing, and indebtedness, farm loss and bankruptcies in rural communities are on the rise. The COVID-19 crisis has compounded the dairy crisis, further revealing the fragility of the concentrated system built by corporations.

“The biggest dairy companies in the world have the same combined greenhouse gas emissions as the UK, the sixth biggest economy in the world, according to a new report,” wrote the Guardian’s Damian Carrington in the June 15 coverage of our report. “More than 90% of the corporate dairy industries’ emissions are produced by the cows themselves, mostly in the form of methane.”

The corporations’ increase of 32.3 million tonnes of GHGs in 2017 equated to the pollution stemming from 6.9 million passenger cars driven in one year (13.6 billion litres or 3.6 billion gallons of gasoline). The combined 2017 emissions exceeded the emissions of carbon majors BHP and ConocoPhillips, two of the top 20 fossil fuel emitters.

Increased market concentration through mergers and acquisitions has contributed to the emissions rise. The French dairy corporation Le Groupe Lactalis, for example, increased its emissions by 30%. The corporations’ combined milk intake went up by 8%.

Despite the climate crisis, zero of the 13 processors have explicitly committed to a clear and absolute reduction of emissions from their dairy supply chain. These are emissions from the animals themselves, defined as scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 emissions account for over 90% of industrialized dairy emissions.

Meanwhile, thousands of small-scale and family farms around the globe went out of business, farmers incurred mounting debt and farm incomes declined in the four major dairy producing regions: Europe, the U.S., New Zealand and India. Farmers continue to be paid below the cost of production in these regions.

Covd-19 has illustrated the vulnerability of this concentrated, industrialised system. While farmers are being forced to dump excess milk and bear the risks of production, Big Dairy continues to profit leading to calls for supply management programs.

“Two years after we reported our first estimates, our second study shows that the dairy industry remains unaccountable. This means that governments must regulate powerful corporations that control the milk supply and oblige them to foot the bill for environmental and public health impacts, rather than villainising farmers trapped in the system,” says Shefali Sharma, director of IATP Europe and author of the report.

“Even as industrialised countries are tasked to raise their climate ambitions, dairy corporations continue to expand in power and production while rural communities suffer. And yet, policies that offer the most promise in stopping overproduction and ensuring fair prices to producers are the same ones that can help reduce emissions. Governments can and must redirect public funds to enable farmers to dairy in a way that preserves their livelihoods and the planet.”