Efforts by the dairy industry to address the warming caused by methane are gaining momentum, with more companies disclosing data, releasing action plans and reporting progress in reducing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.
Agriculture creates close to 40 percent of human-caused methane emissions and livestock is responsible for most of that. With plant-based alternatives making only limited inroads into the market, companies with science-based targets are in need of methods for cutting the methane released from cattle burps and manure.
The good news is that the company with perhaps the industry’s most ambitious methane commitment appears to be on track. Danone announced this week that it had reduced methane emissions from its fresh milk supply by 25 percent since 2020, keeping it on course to hit the targeted 30 percent reduction by 2030.
Methane alliance
Danone’s announcement was one of a flurry from members of the Dairy Methane Action Alliance, an industry collaboration convened by the Environmental Defense Fund and Ceres, two climate non-profits. Alliance members commit to disclose methane emissions as a step toward creating an action plan for reducing them. The group, which includes Starbucks and Nestlé, meets every other month.
Other alliance developments include:
- Three more companies — Agropur, Idaho Milk Products and Savencia Fromage & Dairy — joined the group.
- Lactalis USA and Danone published two of the industry’s first-ever dairy methane action plans.
- Bel Group, Clover Sonoma, General Mills and Starbucks also disclosed their dairy methane emissions.
Danone is tackling its methane challenge on multiple fronts, said Chris Adamo, the company’s head of global sustainability impact and B corp. Notable progress has come in lower-income countries, where there is more scope to cut emissions by making dairy farms more productive. This includes working with farmers to source more nutritious feed and introducing breeds of cattle that produce more milk. Danone is also partnering with Sistema, a company that has developed a modular biodigestor that smaller farms can use to process manure into fertilizer and biogas.
Danone generated $31 billion in sales in 2024, but smaller dairy companies are deploying similar tactics. Clover Sonoma sources 100,000 gallons of milk daily from 27 farms close to its headquarters in Petaluma, California. The company is on track to hit its target of cutting methane intensity by 10 percent by 2026, thanks in part to helping its suppliers access government funding for technology that processes manure and reduces emissions.
Feed additives
Neither Danone nor Clover Sonoma, though, is yet deploying another much-discussed methane-reduction approach: feed additives, which studies suggest can cut methane emissions by as much as 90 percent.
“When we jumped into the project, we had some hope that feed additives might be one of the effective levers to drive some change,” said Michael Benedetti, Clover Sonoma’s vice president of sustainability, quality and regulatory. And, in fact, a trial of a seaweed-based additive resulted in a more than 50 percent reduction. But regulatory and sourcing challenges have prevented the company from further pursuing the solution.
Costs are an issue for Danone, noted Adamo; additives are a “pure cost to the farm or to us,” he said. Other mechanisms the company is working have benefits their own benefits, such as reduced labor due to better manure processing.
Feed additives could still play a role, however, especially as more companies begin to disclose methane emissions and, if they choose to follow Danone’s lead, set reduction targets. There are still plenty of gains to be made using other methods, particularly by improving productivity in low and middle income countries, said Katie Anderson, senior director for business, food and forests at the Environmental Defense Fund. Elsewhere, additional mechanisms are going to be needed, she added: “We have a lot of tools today and we need to use them fully, but we’ll also need more to reach a 30 percent across-the-globe target.”
