Danish cooperatives agree on data collaboration to strengthen sustainability transparency
With the growing demand for verified climate performance data across food supply chains, Danish Crown and Arla Foods have entered an agreement to share climate and sustainability data between their producer networks. This collaboration aims to make climate reporting easier for producers and strengthen the competitive position of Danish beef and dairy production.
The climate data challenge
Across the agri-food sector, customers increasingly require detailed, verifiable information on the climate impact of agricultural products. This demand places pressure on producers to deliver consistent and accurate climate metrics. Especially in sectors such as dairy and beef, where the value chains are intertwined, as many dairy cows ultimately enter beef production, increasing the complexity of reporting emissions.
Cooperatives sharing data
To meet this demand, Danish Crown and Arla Foods in Denmark have agreed to coordinate climate data sharing for dairy producers allowing data transfer from Arla Foods to Danish Crown. In connection to this agreement Danish Crown has incentivised beef producers to report validated sustainability data by offering an extra €0.07 per kilogram added to their final settlement if they provide valid sustainability data.
The program leverages Danish Crown’s CrownFarm climate initiative and Arla’s FarmAhead data platform.
“Arla has a wide range of strong data points on their cooperative members, which to a large extent are the same data we request in Danish Crown Beef. Our owners have therefore asked not to deliver data in two different places, but instead for us to make the process easier for them. I am very pleased that Arla wants to help strengthen the sector, so that there are good sustainability metrics for both meat and milk,” says Torben Nørremark, Managing Director of Danish Crown Beef Owner Services, quoted in Effektivt Landbrug (translated from Danish).
By enabling data sharing between Arla’s systems and Danish Crown Beef’s sustainability programs, producers can avoid duplicate reporting and instead rely on one coherent data flow.
Enhancing data for beef and dairy production
From Arla’s perspective the collaboration reflects long-standing focus on climate data and customer expectations.
“Arla has worked with data for many years, and it has become increasingly clear to us that this is something customers increasingly demand when it comes to sustainability. It is therefore natural that our cooperative members can use the data they receive through Arla to document their work towards Danish Crown’s customers. As cooperative companies, it is crucial that we work together to make data reporting as easy as possible for our owners,” says Hanne Søndergaard, Executive Vice President for Agriculture, Sustainability and Communications at Arla Foods, quoted in AgriWatch (translated from Danish).
By linking climate data across dairy and beef production, the partnership supports a more coherent sustainability narrative and thereby strengthening the Danish livestock sector, both by generating climate benefits and improving efficiency for producers.
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Sources: AgriWatch and Effektivt Landbrug