The farmers generate sustainable energy by means of solar panels, windmills or manure mono-fermentation. The energy generated will be enough for the production of all Dutch Campina products from January 1, 2021.
FrieslandCampina said its ambition – and that of its member dairy farmers – is to be climate-neutral in 2050. This is one of the priorities of the 'Nourishing a better planet' sustainability program. The cooperative said it has worked on the transition to green energy for many years and the result of this is that presently more than 3,000 of its dairy farms are generating green energy. Now the company will start buying the extra generated energy.
Bas Roelofs, managing director FrieslandCampina consumer dairy Netherlands, said, “FrieslandCampina and its member dairy farmers are heading towards a more sustainable future in full speed. In the Netherlands, Campina has been entirely produced using green electricity for many years already. We are going to take a further step by starting to use the green energy generated by the member dairy farms and so making our members our energy suppliers as well. As from 1 January 2021, the entire Campina product range will be produced using green electricity generated at the Dutch farms. This will make our Campina 'On the way to PlanetProof' product range even more sustainable."
In 2020, member dairy farmers of FrieslandCampina generated more than 500 GWh of green electricity, which equals the annual energy consumption of more than 184,000 Dutch households.
Outdoor cow numbers rise again
FrieslandCampina also revealed the statistics regarding the number of its dairy farmers putting their cows out into the meadows in 2020 has grown for the sixth year in a row.
In 2020, 83.6% of the Dutch members of FrieslandCampina applied some form of outdoor grazing. This is an increase of 0.6% compared to 2019.
As many as 10,439 member dairy farms of FrieslandCampina applied outdoor grazing in the year 2020 and 125 of these decided to start outdoor grazing in 2020.
The cooperative’s dairy farmers receive an outdoor grazing premium of €1.50 per 100 kg milk when their dairy cows graze in the meadows at least 120 days per year for a minimum of six hours a day. The milk of these farms is processed as meadow milk and the consumer can recognize this by the meadow milk logo on the packaging of many dairy products.
