Joe McMahan, Vice President Sustainability Initiatives, Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy
The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy was established under the leadership of America’s dairy farmers through Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), a promotional board representing America’s 40,000 dairy farming families. For example, DMI was behind the popular “got milk?” advertising campaigns in the 1990s. Since then, consumer preferences and expectations have transitioned DMI’s messaging to focus on stories of authenticity around where food comes from and how it’s produced. Now more than ever, transparency and demonstrated positive impact are an integral part of that story and foundational to the long-term viability of the industry.
The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy was established to bring the dairy community together to address these changing consumer needs and expectations through a framework of shared best practices and accountability. Through the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, the dairy community supports socially responsible, economically viable and environmentally sound dairy food systems that promote the current and future health and well-being of their consumers, communities, cows, employees, businesses and planet. They are dedicated to ensuring high quality, nutritious dairy products that are responsibly produced and transparently marketed in ways that help consumers make informed choices. They do this through the work of five committees devoted to advancing sustainability initiatives related to food safety, environmental stewardship, people & community, nutrition, and animal care, and through the Dairy Sustainability Alliance™, which convenes more than 100 organizations and 350 members to accelerate progress and advance sustainability leadership.
What do you actually do all day?
My primary focus is working across all of our stakeholders and sustainability-focused committees to aggregate their work into a comprehensive framework we’ve developed called the U.S. Dairy Stewardship Commitment which was published in November. It was a massive undertaking and we’re so pleased we could bring together such a cohesive commitment that represents the collective efforts of so many different groups within our community.
Within the Stewardship Commitment, I oversee the development of metrics and reporting for the Innovation Center. Our board members’ companies alone have an incredibly broad footprint. They provide 60% of the supply of milk in this country, so a big part of managing our metrics is supporting a comment and review period for any metric revisions and additions. This ensures the dairy community – as well as dairy customers, non-profits, and other external stakeholders – has the opportunity to review and approve anything new.
I also oversee the development of our materiality assessment to ensure that our priorities and strategy are aligned with globally recognized protocols for sustainability. For example, we’re working to ensure our platform and reporting are aligned with the World Resource Institute’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), several International Organization for Standards (ISO) standards, and CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project). We have partial alignment already but want to fine tune it and ensure we can receive recognition for our achievements and that we’re talking about sustainability in a way that’s recognized and credible.
I also work one-on-one with dairy co-ops and processors to help them with their sustainability programs. I share sustainability resources with them and make sure to collect their input. Much of this work is focused on how to drive efficiency to reduce your environmental footprint; things like establishing a baseline and measuring progress. Our toolkit includes resources like our Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Animal Care program in use by over 98% of the U.S. milk supply, and an accompanying Environmental Stewardship module that can track and measure a dairy farm’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, along with numerous resources to advance continuous improvement.
On the environmental side, the FARM program helps our members address four primary sources of GHG emissions associated with dairy farming. First there’s enteric, or methane emissions as a result of digestion. Contrary to popular belief, this is primarily from belching rather than out the other end! Other sources of emissions come from feed production, manure, and energy use. The tricky thing is that many of these factors are interconnected. For example, the amount of emissions from enteric fermentation depends on the type of feed and the breed of the animal, and those factors in turn influence emissions from the manure. Improved feed and animal management practices can greatly impact methane emissions, primarily through increased efficiencies and milk yields per cow. Manure management technology also can make a big impact; methods such as using manure for crop production or, for larger farms, putting it in a methane digester first can help a lot.
As part of our Stewardship Commitment work, our team convened a task force with teams focused on scaling adoption, advancing credibility through protocol alignment and third-party support, and reporting and aggregating data at a national level. We’re still building on all this work, and it’s a huge undertaking.
I also help to manage our various partnerships with organizations such as the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. They’re a multi-billion-dollar government agency focused on conservation within forestry and agriculture and they’re helping to ensure that dairy farms have improved access to technical support and funding for conservation programs. Day-to-day I work closely with the National Milk Producers Federation, our sister organization that manages on-farm sustainability evaluations and continuous improvement programs.
What are some of the key skills for success in this role?
You must have the ability to navigate in a rapidly changing environment and be comfortable with managing ambiguity. Most people in this space are self-starters who are good at identifying needs and inspiring people to work with them towards a shared vision. Sustainability professionals rarely have formal authority and usually do a lot of cross-functional work, so you have to be able to see things through the perspectives of others and be able to find ways of bridging different viewpoints to advance the greater good.
When you’re applying to a sustainability position, you should feel confident that you can do the role as described, but I wouldn’t worry if you only check about 2/3 of the boxes. For example, we’ve looked for people who can do a deep dive on scope 3 (on-farm) emissions reporting, but hardly anyone has experience in scope 3 for agriculture because that’s such a new concept. As a result, we focused on people with a solid sustainability foundation who are flexible thinkers capable of managing complexity and ambiguity. Strong, demonstrated project management capabilities are also really important, as are excellent presentation skills. Those are the kinds of skills we’d need to see direct experience in, but many aspects of sustainable food, agriculture, and supply chain knowledge could come from graduate school, work experience that may not have a direct sustainability tie-in, or be learned on the job.
What is your favorite part of your job?
I love that no two days are the same and that it’s such a dynamic environment. I work on a fantastic team, and love being able to bring lots of smart people together and work towards an optimized solution or approach where everyone can benefit. It’s about the people I work with and our shared vision for advancing sustainability for such an influential and prevalent industry.
The dairy industry feeds the world. We want to be progressive, forward-thinking global leaders in sustainability but it’s also important to ensure we’re not just distilling the industry down to metrics. We need to ensure we’re keeping the greater societal value in mind as well; dairy foods are the source of the majority of calcium and vitamin D in the US and the foundation of livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people around the world. We’re trying to be wholistic and remember the big picture, the majority of processors and farmers are in rural areas and the economic vitality of those rural areas is an important part of the industry’s overall sustainability as well.
What is the hardest part of your job?
One of the most difficult things about this work is that historically there have been so many competing perceptions of what’s meant by sustainability. Throughout the food industry and well beyond just dairy companies, organizations have taken their own stance that might not be truly transparent or grounded in science. You can see this in absence claims – for instance, antibiotic and GMO-free milk, while there are never antibiotics in dairy products and there is no such thing as a GMO cow! Misleading marketing may benefit a brand in the short term, but overall can dilute trust for the entire category. It takes a lot of work to get everyone speaking the same language and making sure that we remain focused on science-based sustainable outcomes and authentically positive impact.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
The U.S. Dairy Stewardship Commitment is the culmination of everything I’ve been working towards and I’m incredibly proud that it’s reflective of the hard work of the dairy community. This work originated from a small group of forward-thinking industry leaders and has transitioned to become core to the Innovation Center. It’s really a sign that we’ve hit critical mass with getting people onboard and engaged and that we’re collectively advancing sustainability for the whole category.
What are the game changers in your world?
It would be great to see the entire U.S. dairy supply chain working together to continue to advance consistency in sustainability measurement, reporting, and messaging. The progress we’ve made is remarkable, but there’s still much to do. Coupled with our ongoing development of stakeholder-aligned tools and resources to advance continuous improvement in an economically-viable manner, our collective approach goes a long way to enhance consumer trust in dairy products and the people that produce them.
What was your path to this role?
I’m was fortunate to work in international development before sustainability was a corporate buzzword. I was in the Peace Corps, then working in specialty coffee for nearly 4 years in East Africa where I learned a lot about economic livelihoods and agriculture – albeit in a quite different environment than here! I came back to the US to get my MBA at Duke’s Fuqua school where I was very involved in sustainability-focused programs such as their social entrepreneurship concentration and Net Impact. My summer internship was with Mars working on a sustainable cocoa project in Indonesia. That work led to a full-time position with Coke after school which I enjoyed, but it was missing that direct connection to the farm that is so important to me. I really love working for the dairy industry; it’s a wonderful culture that the vast majority of the American population are removed from. It’s wonderful to connect with folks who are generally humble by nature and help them to bring their stories to life. Most dairy farms are multi-generational and family owned, and their values and the work ethic are remarkable. I want to ensure the dairy community is actually represented when working with our customers and the world.
What’s your advice to someone interested in a role like this?
You’ve got to be scrappy. You’ve got to be willing to go into a position that’s not where you want to be long term but will serve as a stepping stone to where you want to go. You need to network like crazy, reach out to connections, and be willing to challenge where you might be going; if you want to go into environmental nonprofits, you might get a lot of benefit from working in a sustainability-related role for the government or private sector. As long as you’re at that nexus, you can gain a lot of cross-sector perspectives and relevant expertise, so don’t constrain yourself. A lot of people haven’t heard of my organization, it lacks the cachet of a brand like Coca-Cola, but it’s truly fulfilling work and I love it.
What are your favorite resources?
I’ve been consistently impressed by the quality of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps fellowship program. We’ve had a climate corps fellow for the last two years and they’ve had a tremendously positive impact on our work. They also host some very helpful webinars and training programs that both the fellows and those hosting them can learn from.
The Global Reporting Initiative has some wonderful templates and guidance. Their materiality assessment framework is invaluable, and it’s essential to understand it if you’re interested in sustainability reporting.
The ISEAL Alliance is the global membership association for credible sustainability standards. They offer great guidance on best practices for how to transparently develop sustainability standards and metrics.
Field to Market, They’re the alliance for sustainable agriculture in crop and feed production with a structure very similar to ours. Through a formalized partnership we work with them regularly and learn much from their work.
The Sustainable Agriculture Summit convenes all commodity agriculture in the US to look for big picture opportunities for collaboration. If interested in a role in Sustainable Agriculture or just building out your knowledge in this space, I highly encourage you to attend.
The US Dairy Sustainability Alliance has webinars, newsletters, and biannual meetings. The Alliance hosts a standalone event in the Spring, then precedes the Sustainable Agriculture Summit in the fall to convene our industry and learn from each other.
Who (or what) is your sustainability hero?
One thing that really inspired me early on was a TED talk given by Jason Clay from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 2010. He’s one of the most articulate, pragmatic sustainability professionals in the field. He leads the food and agriculture supply chain sustainability work for WWF. It really helped spark my interest in this work and solidify that this was what I wanted to do.
