“Sustainable healthy diets consist mostly of unprocessed or minimally processed plant-based foods with moderate amounts of animal-sourced foods. Consuming more plant-based foods and less animal-sourced foods could reduce environmental impact and increase health benefits. However, animal-based foods such as dairy play a vital role in sustainable diets because of their unmatched nutritional quality.”
Water is a finite and vulnerable resource in South Africa, and dairy farming addresses its use carefully by focusing on both quantity and quality. Water is essential for producing high-quality dairy products and is used throughout the processing chain for cooling, heating, washing and cleaning. Given that significant volumes of water is used in irrigation for pasture-based systems, initiatives have been launched to promote sustainable production methods and reduce nutrient leaching and pollution.
A Best Practice Guideline was developed to manage aquatic and wetland buffer zones on dairy farms. This approach builds on WWF-SA’s work by tailoring recommendations for use by the dairy sector. It includes steps for implementing riparian buffer zones and enhancing wetlands to maintain biodiversity and improve watercourse health. Coordination among landowners within catchment areas is advised to maximise the effectiveness of these strategies. While resource-intensive, low-cost interventions can provide immediate benefits.
Riparian and wetland buffers can address several of these issues. Buffers are defined as a strip of land with a use, function or zoning specifically designed to protect one area of land against impacts from another. In the case of dairy farms, buffers can have several benefits:
- maintenance of channel stability
- control of microclimate and water temperature
- stormwater and flood attenuation
- provision of terrestrial and aquatic wildlife habitat
- sediment, nutrient, pathogen and toxin removal
- and habitat connectivity.
Buffer zones, however, offer no protection from point sources of pollution. They also offer limited protection in several scenarios including poor water quality from upstream users, watercourses under pivots, and linear agricultural drains. Recommendations to address these impacts are made through the creation and / or enhancement of wetlands.
South African dairy processors are adopting diverse strategies to improve water resilience, including efforts to reduce the amount of water use, recover water and reuse water. For instance, benchmarks for water efficiency in producing dairy products have been established, averaging 2.4 L of water per litre of product in 2022. Factories optimise systems such as ‘clean-in-place’ to save water, train staff to reduce wastage, and use wastewater treatment technologies.
An integrated water and waste recovery system implemented by Woodlands Dairy in the Eastern Cape demonstrates the potential for sustainable solutions. This system uses reverse osmosis to recycle wastewater to potable standards for reuse and employs an anaerobic bioreactor to produce methane from organic waste, which fuels a boiler to meet steam requirements. Such advancements reduce reliance on municipal water systems and promote sustainability.