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Fonterra Co-operative Group believes managing climate change and producing quality nutrition must go hand-in-hand. In our own right and within the industry, Fonterra is working to achieve both. This is important. Access to healthy, nutritious food is essential for human wellbeing and agriculture is critical to this access. Yet the world’s agricultural production is facing significant disruption.Global health challenges such as undernutrition and obesity are matched by impending environmental challenges. Droughts, sea level rise, floods and other consequences of climate change are set to challenge the world’s ability to produce nutritious food to feed a growing population. The role and importance of dairy in this picture is too great to ignore. Fonterra is a global leader in dairy nutrition. As the world’s largest processor and exporter of dairy products we have the opportunity to apply our expertise, scale and influence to lead the role of the dairy industry in future of sustainable food production.Through our leadership within the International Dairy Federation in 2016, Fonterra played a key role in the dairy community’s Dairy Declaration of Rotterdam. This recognises the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as the overarching framework that guides our actions towards sustainable development from a social, environmental, and economic and health perspective. This reflects our view that dairy is vital to health and nutrition, and plays a major role as countries’ economies, income and employment. As a co-operative owned by 10,500 farming families in New Zealand, we are reminded daily that dairy supports livelihoods as well as healthy lifestyles. The Food and Agricultural Organisation’s Global Dairy Facts remind us that dairy provides 240 million jobs globally and directly supports the livelihoods of close to one billion people. Among that billion are the multitude of small-scale farmers, who play an important role in agricultural supply chains, but whose incomes are especially vulnerable to climate shocks such as prolonged drought.Dairy’s place in healthy diets is not disputed. Most national dietary guidelines recommend two to three servings a day. There is growing evidence to support its place, not only in a healthy diet, but within specialised diets which enable people to manage a range of health problems. These include osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease – all of which take their toll on individuals as well as nations’ healthy budgets.This recognition of dairy’s nutritional value is seeing consumption increase, underlining the importance of global trade in dairy so that producer countries, such as New Zealand and the EU, can satisfy demand in countries with a production shortfall. We are part of the solution for hunger, but recognise that we are also part of the problem of climate change. Dairy uses seven per cent of the Earth’s habitable land and is responsible for 2.7 per cent of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But simply slashing production to reduce emissions is clearly not the answer if the end result is a nutritional deficit for a growing global population. To provide 500 mls of milk a day – the recommended DR JEREMY HILL, CHIEF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, FONTERRA CO-OPERATIVE GROUPCAROLYN MORTLAND, DIRECTOR, SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, FONTERRA CO-OPERATIVE GROUPMANAGING CLIMATE CHANGE AND PRODUCING QUALITY NUTRITION“THE NEW ZEALAND PASTURE GRAZING FARMING SYSTEM IS AMONGST THE MOST EMISSION-EFFICIENT IN THE WORLD ”Pictured right: South Canterbury farm with Southern Alps in background060 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGs)