Reliable and validated GHG reductions
The Dedicated Dairy Farms program has just reached a major milestone: its methodology and procedures have been validated by the independent body SustainCERT. This confirms that the programs’ design uses a methodology that can deliver the expected greenhouse gas reductions.
More and more companies are committing to fighting climate change and reducing their greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). However, only the most serious ones act according to the standards set by recognized, independent organizations. This is the case of General Mills and Saputo, for instance. These two major agri-food processors are reducing part of their GHG emissions in Quebec by working with Dedicated Dairy Farms: a program created by Logiag and its partners whose methodology has just been validated by SustainCERT.
“Our validation confirms that this Quebec program designed to combat climate change in agriculture complies with the strict standards and can produces the intended GHG reductions”, says Henk Harmsen, Principal Climate Scientist at the Europe-based organization. In practice, this means that participating farms and agri-food processors will find it easier to add value to their efforts throughout their value chain, right up to the products sold to the public.
In short, Dedicated Dairy Farms is an innovative program that paves the way for valid GHG reductions for the entire dairy industry in Quebec and North America.
“The design and validation of the program took two years of work,” explains Marie Morvan, who works for Logiag as a standards and protocols specialist in the Climate Transition team. “In particular, we had to determine the most appropriate methods for measuring, reporting and validating GHG reductions in a Quebec agricultural context, and justify our choices and references to SustainCERT.”
SustainCERT: a recognized, independent organization
Founded in 2018, SustainCERT is one of the best-known validation and verification bodies in the world of climate change. In particular, it is renowned for validating projects targeting Scope 3 GHG emissions.
Indeed, it is important to know that companies produce three types of emissions, named Scope 1, 2 and 3. The first ones come directly from their offices or factories. The second results from the production of the electricity they use. The third comes from their value chain. In the case of agri-food processors, for example, Scope 3 emissions include GHG emitted by the farms or groups of farms from which they source fresh food.
A program for the entire agri-food value chain
Scope 3 emissions are at the heart of Dedicated Dairy Farms. This program brings together in a single project agri-food processors wishing to reduce their GHG emissions and groups of dairy farms supplying them with milk.
Dedicated Dairy Farms is obviously not the only program to offer this type of service. However, three key features clearly set it apart from other similar programs.
First, Dedicated Dairy Farms offers a complete climate transition service that:
- Accounts for farms’ GHG emissions and measures the organic carbon present in their soil.
- Provides farms with personalized support to reduce their GHG emissions.
- Operates within the framework of an integrated market, meaning that all players in the farms’ value chain can recognize their efforts to reduce their GHGs. Unlike offset programs, Dedicated Dairy Farms not only calculates farms’ GHG emissions, but also reduces them and links these reductions to food products.
Dedicated Dairy Farms also stands out for its particularly wide range of agricultural practices capable of reducing GHGs. These practices concern both the field and the barn, which is extremely rare for this type of program.
Finally, the program support farms in adopting more environmentally-friendly practices thanks to its systemic approach. In this approach, agrologists analyze all a farms’ operations before recommending practices to reduce its GHGs or increase the organic carbon in its soils.
In the real world, a systemic approach limits undesirable consequences and enables the new practices to be better aligned with current ones. For example, agrologists will not recommend a given crop to a farm before ensuring that it is well suited to the nutritional needs of its herd, or that it can be sown and harvested with accessible equipment.
Reliable and verifiable reductions
In concrete terms, SustainCERT has examined all the program’s features. More specifically, this organization meticulously checked: the reliability of its data collection, the integration of this data into its calculation tools, the calculation tools themselves and the degree of uncertainty of the final results (i.e. how much can they be relied upon).
In practice, this allowed SustainCERT to provide a reasonable assurance to farms and agri-food processors that, if implemented as planned, Dedicated Dairy Farms can achieve the expected reductions and removals. In other words, this means that Dedicated Dairy Farms correctly calculates farms’ GHGs, proposes practices that will reduce them, and adequately measures these reductions. In addition, to ensure a good correspondance between the program’s written procedures and on-the-ground reality, SustainCERT also conducted interviews with the farms and Logiag’s teams.
To sum up, this validation will guarantee that the GHG reductions are due to the program itself and not to chance or a drop in business, for example. In practical terms, this means that agri-food processors can be sure that the GHG reductions achieved on the farm really do contribute to the achievement of their climate objectives.
A first milestone
SustainCERT’s validation of Dedicated Dairy Farms’ methodology represents a major milestone. But it’s only the beginning. Indeed, the organizations’ rigor now requires field verification that GHG reductions have been properly calculated. In other words, that the reductions forecast by the program materialize on the ground.
In parallel, over the coming months, Logiag’s agronomy and climate transition teams will be developing new practices to propose to farms. The aim is to help them reduce their GHGs ever more effectively and profitably. Logiag will also continue to improve the program’s calculation tools to obtain an even more accurate picture of the GHGs emitted or avoided.
In conclusion, the validation of Dedicated Dairy Farms is the culmination of a great deal of design, organization and brush clearing. Ultimately, this will facilitate appropriate recognition of the farms’ efforts. With the support of processors in their value chain, they can now adopt new practices to reduce their GHGs, sequester more carbon and create products with a smaller carbon footprint. A model that will undoubtedly one day benefit the entire dairy industry.
