The report said Fonterra’s target is to have 85% of significant farm water users metered by 2020.
The largest water users among suppliers are irrigated farms and they are all metered.
“We will now use our focus on farm environment plans to accelerate progress,” the report said.
Another water failure is the lack of documented riparian management plans, covering only 25% of farms compared with the target of 100% by May 31, 2020.
While that 25% achievement is a considerable improvement on the 4% in 2017 and reflects Fonterra’s new ability to capture data from other credible parties the target date has been revised to 2025.
Farm environment plans (FEPs) will again be the mechanism used.
More than 1000 farms or 10% of Fonterra’s suppliers have FEPs and the target is for all farms to have them by 2025.
The co-operative now employs 28 sustainable dairying advisers (SDAs) to help farmers research and write their FEPs.
Each farm is also visited annually by an independent farm assessor for compliance to the Raw Milk Harvesting Standard and just under 4% in 2018 were referred to SDAs with major or critical non-compliances.
Fonterra issued 98 milk collection suspension notices over stock exclusion from waterways and eight farms were suspended for effluent issues.
Also under water use, Fonterra reported lack of progress in water efficiency improvements for manufacturing plants.
The original 2020 target was to reduce by 20% from a 2015 baseline the water use for every cubic metre of milk processed.
The reduction achieved so far is 2.4%, raising serious doubts whether the 2020 target can be met.
“For several years we had been trending in the wrong direction but we have reversed the trend and achieved improvement,” the report said.
“We still have significant work to meet our original target but we have multiple improvements being made and a prioritised plan for further progress.”
Within its environment reporting, Fonterra said progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing is 3% compared with the 2015 baseline.
However, the target is a 30% reduction by 2030.
In the nutrition area Fonterra committed to launch a new, affordable dairy product but did not achieve that goal in the year under review because of delays in development.
It said the target consumers are those surviving on less than US$10 a day.
It has spoken to government officials, non-government organisations, doctors and teachers in key markets to determine the most important nutritional deficiencies.
Consumers have been involved in tastings and feedback as formulations were adjusted.
Fonterra now expects to launch that product in this financial year.
It didn’t write all its own sustainability standards – it used some Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards.
It also commissioned an independent assessment of the report against the GRI standards from Bureau Veritas.
The report covers economic, social and environmental impacts for the year ended July 31, 2018.
Chairman John Monaghan and chief executive Miles Hurrell said Fonterra has set industry-leading targets in many areas and they need to be challenging, not easy.
In priority areas such as nutrition, the environment and the community Fonterra is proud to report good progress.
Concerning community sustainability, Fonterra set new targets to increase the number of women and ethnic minorities in senior leadership levels to 50% and 20% respectively.
In the total workforce of 22,358 people 27% are female but only 17% of the management team and 18% of directors are women.
