Nestlé partners with dairy firms to scale regenerative agriculture
Nestlé’s dairy sustainability strategy focuses on raising operating standards among its farm partners, Katja Seidenschnur, the company’s global head of sustainability for nutrition and health, said during a Climate Week panel. Nestlé has reported a 26% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions and a 25% reduction in methane emissions across its dairy supply chain since 2018.
Seidenschnur said wider adoption would require technical assistance, reliable data, supportive policy conditions and cooperation among companies in the value chain. The company is working with supply-chain partners on ways to finance longer-term investments by farms and create incentives linked to their individual regenerative objectives.
Royal Dairy Farming, an industrial and regenerative dairy operation in Washington that supplies Nestlé, is testing regenerative methods with about 7,000 cows. The farm uses composting and worm-based biofiltration to recycle carbon and nutrients, while measuring carbon reductions, waste reuse, fertiliser production and changes in soil health.
Austin Allred, the farm’s owner, identified access to capital as a major constraint. He said farmers generally need returns within days or weeks, and in a particularly good year might be able to wait about three months if diesel prices fall. Allred said sustainable dairy would work only if farmers were placed at the centre of the solution.
California Dairies Inc, a cooperative of almost 300 independent dairy farms, is one of Nestlé’s milk suppliers and provides roughly 17bn pounds of milk a year. Its sustainability manager, Dixie Martinho, said adoption required financial incentives, technical support and flexibility rather than a single approach for all farms. She said Nestlé’s partnership with the cooperative directly supports and rewards farmers’ investments, while also identifying upfront incentives and trusted, practical farm data collection as continuing challenges.
Other partnerships are addressing adoption beyond individual farms. Louis Dreyfus Company’s global head of regenerative agriculture, Axelle Bodoy, said farmers also needed peer groups to exchange experience. Nestlé partnered with Louis Dreyfus in 2024 to help Argentine farmers use regenerative practices for soy and corn grown as cattle feed, with the aim of reducing the crops’ environmental footprint.
James Havlock, a vice-president and managing director at regenerative-agriculture data company Arva Intelligence, said the sector faced difficulties moving from pilot schemes to broader use. Arva works through local networks, cooperatives and retail agronomists trusted by growers. Havlock identified geography and differing programme designs among consumer-goods companies and retailers as two main obstacles, and called for joint investment in programmes based on a common design. Allred said cooperation was needed both among farmers and across the wider supply chain.
