How Can the Food Industry Contribute to Carbon Neutrality?

During the National People's Congress, the "orderly promotion of carbon neutral carbon peaks" was written into the 2022 government work report. On March 11, Mr. Leng Youbin, a deputy of the National People's Congress (NPC) and chairman of Feihe Dairy, and Mr. Shi Yudong, a deputy of the NPC and senior manager of the R&D Department of Mengniu Group, shared their experiences in carbon reduction in their industries during the "2022 National Two Sessions Economic Policy" online interview with Xinjing News.

According to research data, the agriculture and livestock industry contributes about 17% to global greenhouse gas emissions, ranking third after the energy and construction industries.

desert trees

The UN Global Compact 2021 report "Carbon Neutral Pathways for Business" points out that before food is put on the table, it needs to go through layers of links from R&D, harvesting, processing, distribution, retailing to storage, each of which generates greenhouse gases.

For carbon reduction in the food industry, Leng Youbin shared the results of Feihe Dairy's exploration of the ecological cycle model of the whole industry chain. In the past two years, Feihe has introduced partners and built the largest ecological recycling project in the alpine region through technological innovation.

The project mainly uses cow manure and corn straw as raw materials, through high concentration anaerobic fermentation, making biogas and organic fertilizer, can solve the pollution problem caused by manure and straw burning. Biogas purified biomass natural gas can supplement clean energy for pastures and factories.

Organic fertilizer returned to the field can improve the organic matter content of the soil, effectively promote the protection and utilization of black land, forming a complete ecological closed loop between agriculture and livestock workers.

National People's Congress deputy, Feihe Dairy Chairman Leng Youbin.

"Now all three projects we built have been put into operation, which can solve the problem of recycling 300,000 mu of corn straw off the field and harmless treatment of 300,000 tons of cow manure every year, and can produce 21 million cubic meters of biogas and 150,000 tons of organic fertilizer.

In addition, our plant is also reducing carbon emissions across the board through equipment, technology and management innovations. By converting coal to gas, we have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 177,000 tons, equivalent to 68,000 tons of standard coal burned, which is approximately equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by more than 9.5 million trees in one year.

In the future, we will also invest more resources to reduce carbon emissions and achieve carbon neutrality." Leng Youbin said.

Mengniu has also explored the field of carbon reduction. At the milk source end, Mengniu's two livestock companies, Shengmu and Modern Herding, are the first to carry out strategic carbon neutral actions.

"Saint Shepherd, in particular, has planted more than 90 million trees in the Ulaanbaatar Desert over the past 10 years, creating a globally visible organic pasture in a desert oasis, a case that was selected for the UN's Corporate Carbon Neutral Pathway Map." Shi Yudong said.

Shi Yudong, a delegate to the National People's Congress and senior manager of R&D at Mengniu Group's R&D and Innovation Department.

On the production side, Mengniu has 22 national green factories, which fully apply renewable energy such as solar energy and biogas power generation, and some factories have achieved "zero-carbon" operation in their sewage treatment facilities. In downstream logistics, Mengniu has launched the "Green Genie" program, replacing traditional corrugated boxes with digital environmental crates, saving 78,000 tons of raw paper, cutting down 2.06 million trees and reducing 1,680 tons of CO2 emissions each year.

In order to stimulate the dairy industry's green and low-carbon transformation, Shi Yudong suggested during the National People's Congress that an incentive policy be introduced to provide policy support for representative early demonstration enterprises or "carbon neutral" cases, to establish a benchmark for the dairy industry's low-carbon development, to drive the industry to accelerate the scientific carbon reduction planning and implementation, and to help the country.

This will set a benchmark for the low-carbon development of the dairy industry, drive the industry to accelerate the scientific carbon reduction planning and implementation, and help the country achieve the goal of "carbon peak, carbon neutral" as soon as possible.