| | FEBRUARY 20238CIOReviewIN MY OPINIONThere can't be many industries that have endured as long as agriculture and even fewer that have developed so much since their inception. An ever-growing population has required farming to continually adapt and improve, producing more with less. This task is difficult enough given that most farming sectors are still utterly dependent on the seasons and the weather, but with a changing climate, for every action we take, we must consider our wider impact; it's not just what we produce, it's how we produce it.Agriculture undeniably contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and we must, of course, acknowledge this. Finding ways to meet the nutritional needs of the people on our planet is also a huge challenge, and within my area of dairy, supply cannot keep up with demand. This is especially in parts of the world where food security THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE MIGHT BE DATA-DRIVEN BUT REAL CHANGE WILL COME FROM ITS FARMERSBy Graham Wilkinson, Vice President of Agriculture, Arla Foodsis not a given, with nutrient-dense milk playing an important role.So how can we produce enough to meet a growing global demand and at the same time adapt to ensure we do this in a sustainable way, as our consumers, politicians and society rightly expect? The answer is data and using it where it counts.At Arla Foods we take a data-led approach and our 8,900 farmer owners of the cooperative have recognized the potential of working together to understand our impact and help signpost where the solutions lie. We have introduced Climate Checks to gather what is now one of the world's largest sets of externally verified data on dairy farming, to guide us on our journey towards more sustainable dairy. The Climate Check consists of 203 questions about everything going on at farm and while it sounds like a time-consuming task, the value it provides to individual farms and the wider business is plain to see. Once the data is externally-validated, it provides farmers with information on what areas of their business contribute most to carbon Graham Wilkinson
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