Translations

LA PROSPÉRITÉ FERMIÈRE / INGREDIA mobilises its members to reduce its carbon footprint and that of its customers

1. Organizational Governance

Relations with stakeholders

Sector Food-processing

Year 2014

Country France

Transmitter

Context

Ingredia is a Limited Company created in 1991 by the Cooperative Group "La Prospérité Fermière" which collects the milk of 1,800 members in the Nord-Pas de Calais region. The primary mission of Ingredia is to give value to all the milk of our members (milk powders, milk protein). Dairy farming is an activity sector which rejects a lot of greenhouse gases (digestion of cellulose-rich feed, cows' excretions, input). "La prospérité Fermière/Ingredia has thus committed to raise awareness among its members on these environmental problems.

Objectives

Raising awareness among members on their environmental impact
Meeting the growing demand of clients (food-processing groups) to reduce their carbon footprint
Meet the requirements of the Territorial Climate Plan by integrating the members in the Bilan Carbone® perimeter of actions.

APPROACH

Prospérité Fermière/Ingredia has been committed since 2012 to the upstream deployment of its CSR approach in its value chain, i.e in the dairy farms. It will notably be achieved by an approach of environmental issues awareness raising for members.

As he wished to reduce its own greenhouse gases emissions, one of our clients requested from ProspéritéFermière/Ingredients that we run a Greenhouse gases emissions diagnosis of our member's farms.

To do this, ProspéritéFermière/Ingredia called upon two partners:

- Paris INAPG (National Agronomic Institute of Paris Grignon)

- the Breeding Institute who developed the CAP' 2ER tool, enabling the assessment of the carbon footprint (greenhouse gases emission) of the members

This project has two phases:

-1st phase: diagnosis

-2nd phase: action plan to convince the members

- Diagnosis results are shared during local information meetings which enable to spread the information and help understand the diagnosis tools.

- Training of the Milk Advisors (who have direct contacts with the producers) on Greenhouse Gases emissions (performed by the breeding institute)

In order to reduce its Greenhouse Gases emissions, Prospérité Fermière/Ingredia also launched a project which intends to give value to the agro-industrial byproducts produced in the Ternois area:

- Implementation of an experiment aiming to substitute some of the proteins meals (soya, industrial rapeseed) with fat rapeseed meal in the diet of dairy cows.

- objective: proteinic and dietary autonomy of farms and optimisation of grassy areas (permanent meadows)

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

Sustainability of the client relationship
Sense of belnging for the members of the cooperative group
Image of the cooperative group

Benefits

In early 2014, 6 environmental audits performed at 6 farms
2014 Objective: run 60 farm diagnoses
Provide an upstream answer to the CSR approach of the main clients
Reduction of Greenhouse Gases emissions due to the production of milk