The food system of today deliver poorly on the SDG’s, hence there is a need to develop and transform the way we produce, process, package, distribute and consume food. And to do that, we need to have a set of concrete indicators for companies and other actors, to plan activities and measure progress. Indicators for environmental performance needs to be quantitative and based on science and adapted to the dairy sector.  Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool to develop indicators and to follow up progress, but LCA indicators needs to have a broader coverage and be supplemented by other tools.

Dairy production is one of the most studied food sectors in the LCA field. There are many high-quality studies from many regions of the world and there is a good agreement of how the environmental impact profile looks. For example, climate impact and plant nutrient related impacts are critical, and that use of pesticides are of less importance. Moreover, there are other impacts that varies between production systems and regions. So, there is a solid platform for developing good indicators both at farm level and for processing and packaging. Which already have been made by the IDF and the EDF. 

As mentioned, there are several challenging areas that still needs to be developed to cover the breadth of impacts relevant, e.g. biodiversity, use of resources, carbon flows. There is still need for more research and efforts to develop useful indicators also for the most complex impacts. In addition, the indicators need to be aligned with global goals as public health and food security, and at the same time be useful and relevant on farm and dairy level.