Partners include Arla Foods, PRAN Dairy, Solidaridad Network Asia, IDRN-Bangladesh Agricultural University, SEGES Innovation, and The Danish Agriculture & Food Council
Danida Green Business Partnership under the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs funds an innovative dairy project in Bangladesh titled “Green Dairy Partnership in Bangladesh – creating a Sustainable and Productive Dairy Value Chain Model in Southwest Bangladesh.” The EUR 3.4 million project kick-off event was held in Dhaka last week.
The project is pioneering a green, sustainable, and commercially viable dairy business, targeting a 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time achieve a 30 per cent increase in income for 10,000 farmer households with a scaling potential of 50,000. Additionally, this 5-year project aims to ensure that 80 per cent of the targeted farmers are women. Subsequently, the project will streamline milk collection and processing in Southwest Bangladesh, while introducing more sustainably produced dairy products in the market. By adopting Danish expertise on sustainable dairy farming from Arla Foods and SEGES Innovation, the project model aims to assist PRAN Dairy’s business and farmers become more efficient. The key levers are Arla’s ‘Big5’ concept: feed efficiency, feed balance, animal robustness, manure handling and efficient land use.
The impact of these five levers is documented in Arla Foods’ extensive data gathered from their 8,000 farmer owners creating one of the world’s largest sets of externally verified data on dairy farming. The five levers are expected to deliver 25 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the project. The additional 5 per cent is planned to be achieved through process optimisation: energy, food waste and packaging. The project is also expected to deliver proof points, managed by IDRN together with the SEGES Innovation, to guide the green transformation of the dairy industry in Bangladesh.
Administered by Solidaridad Network Asia, the project features PRAN Dairy as the key commercial partner while partners Arla Foods, IDRN-Bangladesh Agricultural University, SEGES Innovation, and The Danish Agriculture & Food Council all play key supporting roles.
