How an Unlikely Alliance for a Better Bay Came to Fruition

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Hershey’s Kisses, Cows & Clean Water: An article series examining dynamic socio-environmental relationships in the Chesapeake Bay watershed 

“Who doesn’t like chocolate and clean water?” asks Kate Fritz, CEO of Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, in reference to the new environmental collaboration with The Hershey Company, makers of the famous chocolate, and another well-known brand Land O’Lakes. Called Sustainable Dairy PA, this initiative expands the Alliance’s work for a more climate-friendly dairy supply chain in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. “The Alliance’s program is extremely innovative because these companies are stepping up and taking voluntary action before regulations are put in place,” Fritz says. “They have an opportunity to green their businesses in a way that makes sense for them prior to regulations.”

Fritz continues, “The Alliance is so excited about our mission to bring together communities, companies, farmers, and conservationists to restore land and waters of the Chesapeake, and this is a good example of businesses stepping to the table in a leadership role and changing how they operate with the idea of having positive local impact.”

Let’s meet the players in this promising collaboration between the Alliance and corporate partners, who recognize that sustainable dairy is good for business. Supporting farmers’ initiatives is good for everyone. Kate Fritz and Jenna Mitchell Beckett, Pennsylvania State Director and Agriculture Program Director at the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, were part of the following conversation. It’s a very important topic for those who live downstream from the 86,000 miles of Pennsylvania waterways, to learn more about dairy farming’s best agricultural management practices—chiefly, riparian buffers and manure management.

Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay

Headquartered in Annapolis, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021. Since 1971, the Alliance has dedicated efforts to restoring the Chesapeake Bay’s rivers and streams, all within the Chesapeake watershed, through partnerships, and individual and community stewardship.

Mitchell explained how a major activity for the Alliance is the Annual Watershed Forum and the Sustainable Business Summit. The forum has a subdivision—Small Business Plus Events—dedicated just to business. These have produced prodigious results. 

“Our first wildly successful Sustainable Business Summit resulted in the 2016 Turkey Hill (Dairy) Clean Water Partnership, which has won awards from Innovation for U.S. Dairy for excellence in supply chain management,” Mitchell says. “To date, we’ve raised close to $10 million for that project.”

The Hershey Company and Land O’Lakes formed a new partnership with the Alliance after the Fall 2019 forum—Sustainable Dairy PA. Since that partnership began, there has been excitement to work with the private sector to inspire more action and gain access to farmers throughout the Chesapeake watershed. Initial funding for Sustainable Dairy PA came from The Hershey Company’s $300,000 commitment to support the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and Land O’Lakes in helping install agricultural conservation practices on Land O’Lakes’ member dairy farms. The partnership, at this time, includes 119 Land O’Lakes member-owners in Central Pennsylvania that ship 50 percent or more of their milk supply to Hershey. A goal is to include all 400 dairy farms in this region.

Fritz explains, “There is a huge disconnect between the general public and the farming community, but this is such a win-win with corporate dollars going for farm and public good. This is a case of high-profile companies working with farmers in a microcosm here, to prove it in the Chesapeake, for the rest of the world.” 

The Hershey Company

Milton Hershey established The Hershey Chocolate Company in 1894 in Hershey, Pennsylvania, when he incorporated his Lancaster Caramel company. His love of candy making actually started with caramels, which he learned to make with fresh milk and first sold from a pushcart. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars were not launched until 1900 and Hershey’s Kisses in 1904. Always believing in education and philanthropy, Milton and his wife, Catherine Hershey, founded the Milton Hershey School in 1909 with money they earned from the chocolate company. Milton Hershey School is a cost-free, private school for boys and girls, once exclusively for orphaned children. Then and now, the school focuses on agricultural and vocational training in Hershey. Milton Hershey’s legacy is built on compassion, persistence, spirit, selflessness, and purpose which are perpetuated by the company to this day.

The company is committed to honoring Milton’s values including its environmental stewardship in the company’s support for the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. The Alliance will utilize Hershey’s grant funds to obtain additional grants for implementing conservation plans and innovative on-farm environmental practices.  

Internally, Hershey created a division for Global Sustainability and Social Impact headed by Jeff King, Senior Director. In making a significant commitment toward reducing their environmental footprint, Hershey recently announced a new set of goals outlining one of the company’s top priorities: sourcing milk from within 100 miles of its Hershey, PA, chocolate manufacturing plant. And they do use a lot of milk, as one of the few candy companies that still uses liquid milk in its products—currently, most chocolate companies use powdered milk. 

There are also new initiatives on dairy sustainability to provide a unified sustainability approach for use in commercial relationships between corporate dairy buyers, like Hershey, and their suppliers. It is a collaborative effort that includes sustainability requirements that must be met by dairy processors and supplying farms as well as an assurance model including third-party verification and progress reporting. They have shown transparency by informing consumers, shareholders, partners, and other stakeholders on progress toward their sustainability goals by publishing sustainability reports since 2010. Fritz comments, “The Hershey Company is thoughtful in their scientific approach and are committed to meeting their science-based targets.”

Land O’Lakes

Land O’Lakes, Inc. is an American member-owned agricultural cooperative. This national co-op is based in Arden Hills, just outside of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, which started as farm country. In the early 1900s, 320 dairy farmers met in St. Paul to form the Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association—in other words, “by farmers, for farmers.” The cooperative naturally focuses on all the things dairy that we love: ice cream, cheese, butter, and, of course, milk. Its sustainability motto is, “Feeding people plus supporting farmer livelihoods while safeguarding natural resources.”

Nationally, Land O’Lakes has been doing great work in setting goals about how they can work with their farmers to help them manage their land for the good of the environment. It has created a division—Conservation Dairy Team—to help farmers learn about sustainability in their practice. 

Sustainable Dairy PA spreads the word about the importance of dairy farmers improving water quality and mitigating climate change. Many of the Land O’Lakes dairy farmers have wanted to make the switch to sustainable practices but couldn’t afford to do so. At Red Knob Dairy, one of the Land O’Lakes members in this program, third generation farmer Andy Young states, “It is going to take a collaboration, all of us working together to accomplish those goals.”

Best Agricultural Management Practices

So, what are best agricultural dairy management practices? In and of itself, manure storage can cost $100,000 annually and is a very complex process involving collection, processing, storage, and then land application as fertilizer. Beckett explains some of the priorities today. “There is a big focus on manure storage, heavy use areas, and stabilized barnyards. A ‘stabilized barnyard’ has a concrete floor, rather than the traditional dirt floor, where manure can easily be scraped and disposed of, rather than running off into fields.”

There is also a major emphasis on riparian buffers, (vegetated “buffer-strips” near a stream, which help shade and partially protect the stream from the impact of adjacent urban, industrial, or agricultural land use), with a minimum of 35 feet width and solar fences to keep cows from these buffers. The plantings reduce stream bank erosion and improve habitat. Solar fences are like electric fences which give a shock to prevent passage. However, a small solar photovoltaic (PV) panel simply collects and converts sunlight into energy that is stored in a battery. Reducing the amount of nutrients and sediment flowing from farms into local waterways not only improves stream health locally, it also helps restore the health of the Susquehanna River as it flows to the Chesapeake Bay.  

Accountability

Climate change is now front and center in our world. According to a report released in August 2021, the United Nations called current conditions, a “code red for humanity.” Sustainable Dairy PA is an example to mitigate and lower those conditions. Accountability for the efficacy of this grant money is facilitated by on-site visits to Land O’Lakes farmers of Sustainable Dairy PA who are committed to meeting sustainability goals. There are benefits to them and the environment.

Alliance Hopes and Dreams

When asked what the Alliance’s hopes and dreams are, Fritz responds, “This is a model right here in our back yard for the rest of the world. In addition to working with the initial 119 farms, the initiative has the potential to reach more than 400 Land O’Lakes member farms in South Central PA supplying milk to Hershey, as funding and support grows. Our hopes and dreams are to receive more grants to facilitate all the member farms supplying milk to Hershey within this region. We can work with hundreds of farmers rather than just one-by-one-by-one.” 

Beckett says, “Our hopes and dreams are that Hershey and Land O’Lakes continue to grow in their excitement for sustainability. We hope Hershey creates peer pressure to other businesses to understand where their farmers stand and make sure these sustainable practices become standard operating procedure, by bearing the weight of the work if needed, not just from the farmers, but throughout the supply chain. Once companies learn what it’s like on the ground and what’s needed, they want to jump in and do everything they can.” 

Fritz continues, “Although Hershey has done a remarkable job in its sourcing to address agricultural, environmental, and labor issues with cocoa worldwide, they are hoping to lead the way on dairy nationally while first looking in their own backyard. The world is being driven by consumers and this pressure is real. In the Chesapeake Bay, consumers are demanding more information on where their food comes from, and they want accountability. Customers now want to know that brands stand for something and not just stand in the crowd. Companies are trying to do the right thing, which makes sense for their climate change goals and their bottom line. 

“We hope to inform and change an agricultural system that is feeding the Chesapeake Bay and our biggest hope along with these commitments is to reduce the pollutant load. This is such a great opportunity because it is attacking a problem at a systemic level, not just a piece of a problem. There is a moment in time where this is happening, a moment to tackle the biggest pollutant sources of the Chesapeake Bay, a moment to bring in our corporate partners who work and employ in our region and to fundamentally change the system of how dairy is produced. There is a ton of dairy in the Shenandoah Valley of Maryland and Virginia, and we are assessing what dairy needs to look like in these two states. We are looking at what work needs to look like in western Maryland. This project in PA is only one piece of a supply chain story. I personally believe this is a transformational opportunity for the Chesapeake Bay.”

You can feel good the next time you bite into a Hershey’s chocolate bar or smear a dab of Land O’Lakes butter on your toast. You know you’re supporting companies that care for the planet.