Earth Day And Dairy Q&A With Heather Oldani, EVP, Corporate Communications, Dairy Management Inc.

This article was written by Nate Birt, Vice President of Trust In Food, a Farm Journal initiative. Learn more at www.trustinfood.com

U.S. farmers are central to the dairy industry’s environmental stewardship successes—and to its commitment to continuous improvement, says Heather Oldani, executive vice president of corporate communications at Dairy Management Inc. On April 22—Earth Day—she encourages dairy farmers to amplify the global conversation about environmental stewardship by sharing what they are doing on their operations.

“Help us to inspire a new belief,” Oldani shares during a video interview with Trust In Food, a Farm Journal initiative. “You are all as dairy farmers doing such great work on your farms today. Find a way to share a story on your social channels or to tell a neighbor, or to tell a friend, or somebody in your community about the great work that’s happening. Because consumers are listening, they are wanting to know more about what it is that you are doing on your farms.”

Ongoing adoption of new technology and conservation practices, right-sized to each farm, means dairies are “making incremental progress and leaving a positive environmental footprint today,” Oldani adds, “as well as on helping to contribute to our larger goals we have as a U.S. dairy sector to achieve carbon neutrality, optimize water usage, and improve water quality by 2050.”

To amplify those efforts, the dairy checkoff has designed a two-month campaign around Earth Day to shine a light on the work of farmers. It’s especially important in 2021 in light of ongoing dialogue about the United Nations Food Systems Summit, where world leaders will discuss progress and next steps related to sustainable agricultural systems.

“You’ve got business leaders and thought leaders and influential governmental bodies looking at what does it take to sustainably feed a growing global population, and what is it going to take across all of our different sectors, whether it’s agriculture or food production,” Oldani says.

Dairy-themed Earth Day outreach already is underway and will continue through May, including:

• Features on dairy producers such as Washington farmer Austin Allred, who’s engineered a novel system for treating wastewater with worms.
• A media partnership with Vox, illustrating what might happen if dairy cows disappeared from the U.S. The video is the second in a series (you can view the first episode on dairy and renewable energy here) designed to engage the American public in a serious conversation framed in a fun way. “We know we would significantly lose a strong source of nutrition, and there would be negligible impact on the environmental sustainability and climate change,” Oldani notes.
• Culinary and lifestyle influencers will use their social media channels to highlight the role of dairy in healthy and sustainable diets.
• The USDairy.com website contains refreshed sustainability information, including infographics, stories about Dairy Sustainability Award winners, dairy farm sustainability practices and insights on the dairy industry’s 2050 goals and Net Zero Initiative.
• Dairy sustainability digital press kits will be shared with journalists covering the environment and a changing climate.
• Dairy leaders will continue participating in sustainability events, such as The Economist’s Sustainability Week conference held in March, to keep the sector’s contributions front and center.

“Farmers are the heroes and heroines of our story,” Oldani says. “If you think about the individuals and families across dairy farms across the country, they have been focused on taking care of the land and their animals for generations, and we want to be able to showcase, through the content that I mentioned, their stories.”

Q&A With Karen Scanlon, SVP, Environmental Stewardship At Dairy Management Inc.

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