New sustainability project focus on delivering environmental solutions on-farm while ensuring farmers remain profitable

Starbucks will work with the British arm of European dairy farmers’ cooperative Arla to develop and pilot a sustainable dairy sourcing blueprint for rolling out across its operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Arla will recruit 14 farmers across the UK to work on the project which focus on environmental stewardship, animal health and welfare while ensuring profitability for farmers through Arla’s UK 360 farm standards programme. By identifying innovative new farming practices and industry-leading methods, the project aims to significantly reduce dairy production emissions.

Dairy emissions account for 22% of Starbucks’ global carbon emissions and the coffee retailer’s ambition is to cut emissions by 50% by 2030. Arla UK’s group senior agriculture director Graham Wilkinson said the partnership ties in with the dairy coop’s own goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% per kg milk produced by 2030.

Arla’s carbon net-zero ambitions recognise the importance of lowering emissions and with the partnership Starbucks acknowledges the importance of a farmer first approach to delivering sustainability initiatives on-farm. The pilot is running for three years.