Walldorf, Germany, Tumba, Sweden and Kaiseraugst, Switzerland: John Deere and DeLaval have announced the Milk Sustainability Centre (MSC) expansion to dairy farmers in more countries and have welcomed dsm-firmenich as the next strategic partner.

Designed to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of dairy farming operations, the MSC offers a unique solution by integrating data on crop, animal and feeding performance into one unified platform.

Developed through a joint effort initiated in September 2023, the MSC empowers farmers to optimise their operations, reduce environmental impact and become more profitable.

Dairy farmers can use the MSC to monitor nutrient +use efficiency (NUE) and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) across their farm, herd, and fields. It provides insights to help farmers manage nutrient utilisation effectively and reduce the need for manual data input.

Today, dairy farmers can already choose to create automised data flow to MSC from 30 herd-, milking- and feeding software. Farmers can also invite their consultants, dealers, veterinarians and other partners to access the platform.

The Milk Sustainability Centre is designed to serve dairy farmers, independent of their farm machinery brands, feeding technology, milking equipment brands, or herd management software. It is now fully available in 13 countries across North America and Europe. Farmers can subscribe free of charge at www.milksustainabilitycenter.com

The highly innovative digital eco-system addresses evolving sustainability standards and the growing demands for sustainable practices in dairy farming.

Alexander Berges, Production System Manager at John Deere, said: “We’re already working on future additions like benchmarking and recommendations functionality. This will further help farmers being more profitable while improving their sustainability.”

Joining the MSC as a Strategic Partner is dsm-firmenich. Its software Sustell is the industry leading lifecycle assessment (LCA) solution that helps the agricultural industry measure and improve sustainability performance. This partnership will allow primary data to flow from MSC to the Sustell software, if the farmer agrees. This will further enhance MSC functionality with extra Sustell data sources and certified carbon footprint calculations, supporting the customers to drive profitable environmental improvements.

Dr David Nickell, Vice President of Sustainability and Business Solutions at dsm-firmenich Animal Nutrition & Health, said: “The partnership between the Milk Sustainability Centre and dsm-firmenich makes environmental impact assessment scalable and easier to implement. This will enable value chain partners to regularly track sustainability performance and to understand where and how to make profitable improvements with credible and transparent data and insights.”

Lars Bergmann, Executive Vice President of Digital Service at DeLaval, added: “We aim to unify the industry to support dairy farmers improving their sustainability footprint. Partnerships like this will provide farmers with integrated tools that simplify automatic data flow, and enhance herd and field performance, which will support long-term sustainability goals. Processors and consumer goods companies will benefit from a more transparent supply chain, strengthened by verifiable sustainability credentials.”

*John Deere is an Executive Member of the Asian Golf Industry Federation.