Digging into dairy sustainability with Danone & Connecterra

Future Food

You’re forgiven if you missed Earth Day last week. I’m sure sustainability and climate change are far from many people’s minds right now as you grapple with a new normal that might involve sick loved ones, loss of a job, or serious challenges in your day-to-day life.

Of course, our planet continues to face the same environmental challenges it did before the pandemic.

Danone, the French multinational yogurt and dairy products company, certainly agrees; the company, a classified B-Corp, is a frontrunner in the food industry for tackling sustainability issues — recently recognized for its work reducing deforestation — and last year launched a coalition to look into the widespread adoption of regenerative agriculture practices in the dairy sector.

Working with Danone in that coalition is Connecterra, a Dutch AI startup using data and analytics to help dairy farmers become more efficient. Connecterra is charged with measuring the impact of different farming practices as the coalition looks to create a set of guidelines for farmers at the end of the initiative in two years’ time. (Full disclosure: Connecterra is an AgFunder portfolio company.)

So I sat down today — virtually of course — with Cees Jan Hollander, global director of farm relations at Danone and Yasir Khokhar, CEO of Connecterra, to find out how the coalition “Farming for Generations” is going and check in how Covid-19 is impacting their businesses. If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt aware of the devastating impact Covid-19 is having on the dairy industry after food service demand dried up and you’ve no doubt seen the upsetting videos of large amounts of milk being dumped in the countryside.

Hollander and Khokhar offer some fascinating insights there — hint: consumer demand for milk products has increased dramatically; as Khokhar referenced “breakfast is having a come back with everyone being at home.” We also discuss how the pandemic is accelerating other trends such as a move towards more localized production, which happens to fit neatly into Danone’s existing local production strategy.