Cow-llaboration! It is at the heart of our Moo’ving Dairy Forward plan—a multi-million-dollar initiative we launched last year to cut methane and make dairy more sustainable. Because we believe that real progress on climate can only happen when we work together.
That’s where Julia and her 150-hectare Dutch family farm come in. You see, in partnership with FrieslandCampina (they’re a big dairy co-operative) and Julia we’ve just opened our first Mars Dairy Flagship Farm.
Located in the leafy Zwolle region in the Netherlands (there really is a lot of greenery), the farm will serve as a platform to pilot cutting-edge tools and technology at the frontier of dairy sustainability. The kind of burp busting, methane cutting innovations that we hope can make a real difference and be scaled and adopted across farms just like Julia’s everywhere.
We’ll see what is working – and what isn’t – by using a piece of technology called the KringloopWijzer. Yes, it’s as cool as it sounds. The KringloopWijzer is an online tool that can track on-farm sustainability data.
As our Chief R&D, Procurement and Sustainability Officer at Mars Snacking, Amanda Davies puts it: “The creation of this special Mars Dairy Flagship Farm is about harnessing the power of partnership to ignite innovation and develop a blueprint for how climate-smart dairy can become a reality at scale.”
With over 200,000 cows supplying the milk for some of our most-loved treats (yes, including M&M’S and SNICKERS), dairy is a big part of what we do—and a big part of our carbon footprint. That’s why farms like Julia’s are so important. They give us a chance to pilot bold ideas and then share what we learn to help make sustainable dairy the norm, not the niche.
Because when it comes to climate action, progress isn’t about going it alone. It’s about cow-llaboration!
