SHARING OPTIONS:
National Dairy Council CEO Zoe Kavanagh says she wants to tackle the disconnect between consumers and dairy farmers with their new campaign. \ Dylan Vaughan
National Dairy Council (NDC) CEO Zoe Kavanagh is characteristically forthright on the thinking behind their new campaign From the Ground Up , which seeks to address consumers’ environmental concerns around dairy farming.
With various anti-farming campaigns and programmes such as RTÉ s
What Planet Are You On?, many dairy farmers feel they’ve lost the trust of Irish consumers and Kavanagh is keen to tackle that disconnect.
“This is effectively an opportunity for Ireland to be the best small dairy-producing nation in the world.
April 12, 2021 5:40 pm
While the Irish dairy sector is good at communicating what it is doing at an environmental level, it is currently missing a beat in terms of communicating with the consumer, according to National Dairy Council (NDC) CEO Zoe Kavanagh.
Kavanagh was speaking to
Agriland ahead of tomorrow’s launch of the NDC’s latest campaign “NDC: Fortifying Irish consumers’ trust in dairy farming”.
‘Talking to itself’
When asked for her view as to whether the sector is doing enough on environmental issues, Kavanagh said:
“Our view would be the sector has done a really good job at talking to itself.
Shoppers are driven by price not environmental concerns regarding food production, according to Zoe Kavanagh, CEO of the National Dairy Council (NDC).
As pressure mounts on the farming sector to radically reduce emissions from food production – as stated most recently in the Government’s Ag Climatise roadmap which intends to make the sector “carbon neutral” by 2050 – the vital question for farmers is: will consumers pay a higher price for ‘greener’ food?
Pat McCormack, president of ICMSA, put it most frankly when he recently stated: “The fantasy that all changes necessary must take place from the farm to the supermarket fridges – with no effect at all on final prices to consumers – needs to be challenged.”
SHARING OPTIONS:
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue TD and chief executive of the National Dairy Council Zoe Kavanagh at the launch of a new fact book “Irish Dairy, Sustainable Ireland”. \ Robbie Reynolds
The National Dairy Council (NDC) has published a new fact book titled Irish Dairy, Sustainable Ireland as part of its work with the European Milk Forum.
The book, which is the third edition to be published in Ireland, outlines the actions being taken on Ireland s 18,000 dairy farms to improve sustainability, increase biodiversity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The main work highlighted in the publication is the more efficient use of fertiliser, grassland management, the use of low emissions slurry spreading equipment, water quality improvement and herd genomics.