“Mooving” ahead with sustainably sourced milk

We know consumers are increasingly interested not only in where their food comes from but how it is grown and by whom. We share consumers’ desire for transparency about what goes into our products.

‘Treat the World with Care’ is a core belief at General Mills.

For our Sourcing team, this means we work to create supply chain resiliency and enable growth by protecting and conserving the raw material base our businesses depend on. For these reasons, we made a commitment in 2014 to sustainably source our top ten priority ingredients by 2020.

Today, we sustainably source 91% of the raw fluid milk we purchase in the U.S. and are on track to meet our goal of 100% by the end of 2020 (the calendar year).

Sustainability impact from farm to production facility

We couldn’t achieve this commitment without the hard work of dairy farmers.

Like row crops, milk is a resource-intensive ingredient. The cows that produce the milk we use in our products have an impact on the environment.

They’re big animals that eat and drink a lot, but it’s what happens afterward that poses the biggest sustainability challenge. It turns out that cows burp a lot, and when they do, they release methane gas that contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as does cow manure.

Organic farming relies on different types of fertilizers and soil management practices to reduce carbon emissions.

Since 2016, we have been working with Organic Valley, the largest organic cooperative in the U.S., to help conventional dairy farms transition to certified organic. Through our sourcing partnership with Organic Valley, General Mills uses milk and cheese from these organic farms in select products including Liberte brand yogurt and Annie’s Mac & Cheese.

These issues aren’t new, and we are collaborating with the farmers and dairy cooperatives in our supply chain to address them.

Using a tool called the FARM Environmental Stewardship Module (FARM stands for “Farmers Assuring Responsible Management”), they are able to collect data from individual farms and calculate sustainability impact from the farm to the production facility.

The annual award honors farms, businesses and partnerships whose practices improve the well-being of people, animals and the planet. General Mills and Foremost Farms were commended for bringing together a network of 16 dairy farmers to assess and implement sustainability improvements using the FARM model.

The farmers achieved a combined GHG reduction of 11% over a three-year period, outperforming national and regional benchmark averages.