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 the final episode of our conversation with Jeremy Pike, the director of sustainability at Idaho Milk Products, about their sustainable practices.
Host - What would you say to other dairy company's thought leaders in the industry who might've just started to embrace the sustainability effort? Might have some hesitations about it as it's clear that the topic of sustainability is quite vast, and there might be even some hot buttons for some folks. In order for the industry to sustain itself and thrive, what kind of guidance would you give these CEOs or business leaders who are taking a gander at our sustainability efforts at Idaho Milk Products?
Jeremy - The first step is the acceptance piece. I think you mentioned it's a hot topic. I don't foresee it going away. Obviously, the changing political landscape that we've seen here over the last year or so. You've seen a retraction from certain folks on maybe calling certain things sustainability like my title will never change, Director of Sustainability. Sustainability will always be part of our business. But you'll see there's folks out there that maybe from a shareholder standpoint, you have to kind of adapt with the times. And my piece would be is for those executives and the leaders to accept that this is a topic that's here to stay. And again, face value depends on the definition that you tie to sustainability. If you're just focused sustainability on environmental, I think that's really where the stigma comes from. It's so much more than just environmental. And so that's really, at least from my experience, seeing where the apprehension may lie, even from a producer standpoint of why am I going to do such and such to reduce my footprint? Well, it's not just about reducing your footprint. There are so many other levers that can be pulled. Again, like I mentioned from that social, that socioeconomic piece, I think that really you take a step back and as a business that maybe say hasn't done anything with sustainability, but is like, oh, maybe we should consider looking into that. I think you start kind of going through, well, what are we already tracking? And I think if the business realizes
Host - Like nutritional, it's already there.
Jeremy - Yeah, exactly. Or you're already innovating. If you have RD and you're innovating and you're like, wow, okay, well, there's a component of health and nutrition and pull that nutritional sustainability lever, or yeah, you have a really great workforce program or apprenticeship program or internship program. Okay, well pull that lever. I think there's a lot of things that businesses don't realize, oh, we're already doing that. We just need to put the substance and the structure behind it to support it. And I think generally speaking, if the business isn't tracking those things, then there's probably bigger problems with that business, specifically, if they're not keeping track of different performance indicators, but somebody new to the landscape saying, you know what? We want to start reporting on sustainability, I think very quickly you'll realize, oh yeah, we're doing this. We're doing that. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. And okay, yeah, there's a producer relations and a producer engagement piece.
Okay, well, who else is out there to support this? Whether it's local checkoff organizations, we have a regional checkoff organization here that's very interfaced with our producers that can help also add a little bit of context, that layer of information, as well as promote dairy on the backend. So I think there's really, the one guiding principle, I would say, is just like, take the step. Take the step. More than likely you will have a good foundation because again, dairy farmers are their businesses inherently sustainable. Dairying has been around for generations and will continue to be around for generations. So I think that that piece there really just speaks to the ability for anybody to get on board. And I think
Host - It's better business too.
Jeremy - It's absolutely better business. And again, the only other, I guess, caveat I would give to that is, again, you have to have that buy-in. You have to have that buy-in from leadership. You have to have the buy-in from obviously the producers and from the employees as well. But you have to come at sustainability from the lens that it's not the flavor of the week. It's not about, oh, well, everybody else is talking sustainability. We better get on the bandwagon. It's not a bandwagon thing by any means in any business that's going to think of sustainability as a trend or, oh yeah, let me hop on the sustainability bandwagon. That's the wrong mindset. Absolutely wrong mindset. And so that's, again, I think as long as you have the support, I think a lot of good can come from it. And that's not to say you're immediately jumping in and signing a stewardship commitment or immediately hopping on SDP and setting yourself KPIs and reporting every year, but take the steps and start, even just attend a conference. The industry puts on a number of different conferences throughout the year. Go see what folks are talking about. Take that back to your board. Take that back to your leadership team and say, Hey, do you know if our farms are participating in X, Y, Z practice? Or do you know if we track our water usage here at the plant? Just start that conversation and you might be surprised that, Hey, yeah, actually there's, there's information there.
Host - Well, thank you for joining us. Jeremy Pike from Idaho Milk Products. Where can we track your updates?
Jeremy - So everything lives on our website, idahomilkproducts.com/sustainability, I believe is where all of the fun sustainable updates live within. There's an interactive report you can export to PDF, but there's a good flip book version that lives on the website, and it's more or less a living document on there. That live version on the website. The KPIs that I referenced earlier in the conversation are updated every year, and we're working through wrapping up 2024s data. But that 2024 column is live and on the website. So you can see our performance up to what we've captured so far. And then I know our team on the commercial side does a great job of sharing that out through the different social media platforms as well. So there's definitely opportunity to find us out there.
Host - Wonderful. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Jeremy - Yeah, thanks for having me.
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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.
