Transcript
Welcome to Milk Theory, the podcast that decodes the future of food. In each episode, we talk to the innovators and leaders who are shaping the multi-billion-dollar dairy industry.
From processing breakthroughs to sustainable packaging, we'll break down the complex world of food innovation, one conversation at a time.
You are listening to episode one of our conversation with Jeremy Pike, the Director of Sustainability at Idaho Milk Products, about their sustainable practices.
Host - Jeremy Pike, welcome to the podcast.
Jeremy - Hi, thanks for having me.
Host - Absolutely. Hey, best beard in dairy, so I've heard.
Jeremy - That's the unofficial accolade, but I'll take it.
Host - What is your formal title?
Jeremy - So my formal title is Director of Sustainability. And essentially, that's a fancy, fancy way of saying I wear many hats. So essentially, you know, sustainability, obviously the topic of conversation today, but sustainability on the broader sense, kind of overseeing all of our metrics around the environmental impact of the business, as well as then pairing together the social and governance impacts and other areas within the business community and a little bit of everything.
Host - Okay, so what does sustainability mean to you?
Jeremy - So broadly speaking, sustainability in just face value is essentially perpetuation. It would be it would be the synonym that I would I would use is basically making sure that we can meet the needs at present to provide for the future so that we are not, you know, from an environmental standpoint, we're not creating any detriment that's irreparable to then future generations. But more specific in our world and in my role we really look at it from the sense of of efficiency from utilizing resources responsibly and then ensuring from an environmental standpoint from an economic or socioeconomic standpoint that we're thriving in a way that can be maintained long term again kind of in perpetuity so within dairy ESG again that environmental social governance piece tends to be, again, synonymous with sustainability, but that's how I look at it.
Host - Can you comment on the state of sustainability in the dairy industry today as a whole before we jump into the work that you're specifically doing?
Jeremy - Sure. Yeah. So generally, sustainability at the local scale, the Idaho scale, very heavily ingrained in business. And again, maybe wasn't always considered, quote unquote, sustainability. But at the regional and national levels, there are different organizations out there that that help to promote sustainability, that have frameworks and structure around them. The U.S. has the U.S. Dairy Stewardship Commitment. That's through the Innovation Center through U.S. Dairy, which is under the broader umbrella of Dairy Management, Inc. And so that's, again, more that U.S., that national lens around sustainability. And then at the global scale, there are a number of frameworks that very quickly become an alphabet soup. From a reporting initiatives standpoint, from an alignment standpoint, there's a plethora of different frameworks and organizations out there that are primarily focused on sustainability. But sustainability, again, is one of those things that maybe has gotten the spotlight in more recent years. And so just greater focus around things that maybe have already been... Been topics that us as Idaho Milk Products as a business have been focusing on, but maybe didn't specifically bucket it under, you know, the, the term sustainability. So landscape wise, you know, dairy as, as a product, agriculture. Dairy farming as, as an industry has had sustainability deeply rooted in, in its existence. You know, you've got, you've got farms that are multi-generational, You've got folks that have, you know, been working the land for hundreds of years, working to provide a nutritious resource to their family, to the community, you know, obviously varying scales and regions based on what's available to you. But certainly a cow producing milk to provide for, again, your family or communities is nothing new. And to be able to do that long term, you have to operate in an efficient and sustainable way.
Host - So it's a better business model, essentially, to embrace sustainable practices.
Jeremy - Yeah, I mean, I think sustainability is the right way of doing business. It is. It's simply better business. I think the way that we operate here as Idaho Milk Products, but generally any anybody that's taking into consideration their impact on the environment, their impact on their community, the society. Their economic impact and trying to, you know, work in an efficient and positive manner and thinking sustainably is certainly certainly the right way. I would want to have my business operate if I owned and operated my own business. It just, it makes sense. You don't want to destroy a natural resource that you're maybe reliant on in order to continue your business. Likewise, you want to do the right thing by your animals, by your community, etc.
Host - That's a really interesting point. Where do you think the disconnect is?
Jeremy - Because if you look at popular culture today, in a lot of ways, depending on the circles you're surrounding yourself in, farmers, dairies, cattle raisers get demonized quite a bit.
Host - Do you know where that disconnect is happening? Is it just a lack of education?
Jeremy - Yeah, I think there's a big opportunity around education. I think there is a huge gap there. And I think a lot of it obviously is driven from the consumer side, right? And so you've got different generations that have different lenses on how they want to consume food. So they might think that dairy face value might seem like it's super unsustainable. You've got cows that are emitting methane emissions. And, you know, even that is something that typically gets misconstrued pretty quickly. You know, we talk about methane emissions from dairy cows. A lot of people are quick to talk about cow farts. I can say farts on a podcast, but I guess I did. So, you know, that's typically misinterpreted. And when we talk about methane emissions from cows, yes, it does come from the back end, from the manure management and from what they excrete, but certainly the bigger impact is from the front end and actually more so on the cow burps side and from enteric fermentation. And so you see a lot of folks that maybe are focused on environmental impacts and wanting to eat cleanly in a minimally environmentally impactful way are quick to point the finger and say, well, cows are emitting these you know harmful greenhouse gases and therefore I don't want to support that as a product as that end product whether it be fluid milk or ice cream or an ingredient or what have you so I think a lot of that's that's misinformation from from the consumer side and also you know you've got obviously the the competing industries out there that have comparable products or trying to I wouldn't say comparable in a nutritional sense but certainly comparable in you know what they're trying to mimic like anything else, right? You've got folks that have certain dietary restrictions that maybe have to remain on a vegetarian diet versus somebody that's able to be omnivorous and have meat. Often there's still that vegetarian comparable of a burger. So when you look at milk, fluid milk, for instance, you'll have that pseudo milk essentially comparable, That maybe they think has a lesser environmental impact. I think a lot of that, you know, when you start peeling back the data, you know, obviously there's work to be done on all fronts, but certainly, you know, just to pull one metric and say, that's why I don't drink dairy because cow burps is, you know, really, that's probably one of the only legs to stand on from an argument standpoint. Obviously, there are a suite of other co-benefits, ancillary benefits that come from agriculture, from producing cows for dairy, and in turn, providing nutritious ingredients like we do here.
Host - So let's dive in a little bit to the data. You produced a sustainability report that was beefy. Excuse my pun, but it was beefy. There's tons of data in it, and I'd like to dive into some of those aspects with you. But before we do that, why did Idaho Milk Products produce this sustainability report? There's a lot of sustainability reports throughout, you know, the industry, whether or not you're in dairy. But this one in particular, I found to be quite expansive. Can you tell me what the goal was in publishing that?
Jeremy - Yeah, yeah So I mean, again, it kind of comes back to the to the previous talking points that we had around, you know, why the focus on sustainability from the consumer front. So who's that consumer? They're buying a product that is coming from a retailer that's getting it from a consumer product goods company. That consumer product goods company is also possibly a publicly traded company that has their own environmental reduction targets or sustainability initiatives. And a lot of that from a data transfer and from a just a data sharing standpoint ends up our our customers we as a supplier to those CPGs you know have very similar similar goals similar ambitions around sustainability and you know you've got any number of surveys that might come from customer and so for us to do a sustainability report you start really peeling back the layers and you realize, okay, well. Customer A wants you to talk about animal welfare and you know soil health customer B wants you to talk about your workforce development and your impact on the community well okay where's where's that one resource that we can put together that really helps to also not only answer questions that might come from downstream customer surveys or questionnaires but also then how can we be proactive and share look at the great things that we as Idaho Milk Products are already doing and then beyond that hold ourselves accountable to say, okay, we're going to make a point to not only be very transparent. So yes, to your point, it is extremely beefy. It's very in-depth for the scale at which we operate at. And so very much so open book, you know, there's no smoke and mirrors to how we operate. The report itself is fairly comprehensive in my opinion, considering, you know, again, from a commercial standpoint, if there's ever a customer that has a question, that's always my first resources. Go to the sustainability report. Use that. If the question that you might have isn't answered there, you know, then we can have a further follow up conversation. But realistically, it's the right thing to do. We need to be tracking these metrics because, again, tying back to that whole idea of perpetuity and being able to be here for generations and for the long term, we need to start tracking this information. We need to start working towards continuous improvement. And if we're not putting it out there for, you know, for our stakeholders to see and we don't set ourselves with targets and goals, you know, then progress really can come to a stall and then we're not really holding ourselves accountable. So I think the need to do the sustainability report was long overdue. When I started in my role, it was very much forefront for us as a business. We had always had a sustainability committee or like a subcommittee working group sort of thing that was cross-functional throughout the business. You'd meet, you know, every so often, but then those cross-functional heads would go back to their day job. And so there was never that single point owner to track and, and collate everything together. So with actually bringing somebody on in my capacity to then also have that single point owner to funnel all that information through from quality, from logistics, from operations, to then take the data, churn it through the different programs and really understand it, and how we work to improve it, I think is critical. And that sustainability report is just that repository for all that year over year data, again, so that our stakeholders have full visibility on what's going on and what's hopefully ahead for us too.
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To learn more about the topic discussed in this episode, follow the link in our show notes. Until next time, have a great day.
