Dunbia tackles sustainability

After reporting on its sustainability credentials in the 2021 Hereford breed journal, Dunbia’s Sarah Haire explains the company’s new Farm Green programme. Sustainability is at the forefront of Dunbia’s agenda and the leading UK beef and lamb supplier has been working tirelessly to strategically put in place emission reduction plans across its operations, says Sarah Haire, group head of agriculture at Dunbia. One pillar which has been critical in the building of its climate and sustainability plan is supplier engagement, which has seen Dunbia create an exciting new sustainable farming programme, Farm Green, explains Sarah. Farm Green aims to transfer knowledge and inspire the farming community to reach shared sustainability goals with content aligning to their five sustainability pillars: environment, animal health and welfare, animal feed, meat quality and sustainable supply chains. Working in collaboration with industry bodies, academic partners, Young Farmers' Clubs and colleges, key information and resources are being disseminated through Dunbia’s social media and digital platform to reach its audience of beef and lamb suppliers and customers.

Sarah comments: “A lot of time and effort has gone on behind the scenes in developing the Farm Green programme to ensure relevance and materiality in delivering key knowledge transfer and learning events for our suppliers. “We appreciate our role in helping suppliers to prepare for the policy changes ahead, and we hope this programme will reach far and wide, in highlighting opportunities for improvement and understanding of key sustainability themes.” Sarah Haire

Launched in November 2021, the programme has already organised two webinars hosted by leading industry representatives, Breedr and AHDB. The aim of these webinars, explains Sarah, is to provide their supply base with the resources and simple tools which inspire sustainable farming, and the first step being data collection on farm.

She says: “Breedr hosted an excellent session on helping farmers to understand how recording simple metrics can result in significant savings, both financially and environmentally. “Following from this, AHDB then hosted an informative session on its business review tool and how it can be used to predict the effects of reductions of BPS payments on their business, review their business resilience and the use of their KPI express tool. Upcoming topics will explore carbon calculators in greater detail as well as sharing information from various ongoing projects.” production and Dunbia’s Farm Green programme offers a route for this to be shared on a wider scale across their UK supply and customer base. A key advantage of the Farm Green programme is the opportunity for farmers to stay connected with the rapidly changing industry requirements which we are facing. Across the supply chain, Dunbia also collaborates with wider industry groups such as Red Tractor, AHDB, WRAP, the European Roundtable for Beef Sustainability and the UK Cattle Sustainability Platform, which is chaired by Sarah Haire. Dunbia are firm believers of the need to work together to deliver the ambitious targets set in both government policy and their customers’ own ambitions with regards to ‘net zero’. Dunbia are actively involved in conversations and workstreams which will encourage the transition to better practices on farm to meet industry expectations. For more information on Farm Green, look out for posts on the Dunbia Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.