On the occasion of the World Dairy Industry Conference held in Hohhot from August 4th to 7th, the latest ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) rating results released by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), an international authoritative index agency, showed that Youran Dairy received a BB rating for its first evaluation, which is currently the highest MSCI ESG rating in the upstream dairy industry in China.
It is reported that MSCI ESG rating is an important standard for global investors to measure the development sustainability and social responsibility of listed companies. With its authority, objectivity, impartiality, and practicality, it has become the most mainstream investment reference basis in the current international capital market.
According to data, Youran Dairy regards ESG as a part of its core competitiveness, which has risen to a strategic level. From strengthening top-level design and building a comprehensive ESG system, to leveraging technological advantages to lead the industry’s green and low-carbon transformation, empowering digital intelligence to improve efficiency and sustainability, using breeding technology to assist in biodiversity conservation, and using high-quality and distinctive raw milk to safeguard consumer nutrition and health, this leading enterprise in the upstream dairy industry has become a new model for the industry to promote ESG practices.
Leverage the technological advantages of the “Dairy Technology Group”
Become a green and low-carbon “leader” in the upstream dairy industry
Green and low-carbon characteristic is the core proposition of ESG work. As a leading enterprise in the upstream dairy industry, business of Youran Dairy fully covers the entire industry chain of “breeding industry, forage grass, feed, dairy farming, and industry chain trading center” in the upstream dairy industry. Green and low-carbon measures penetrate all businesses, forming carbon emissions reduction system for the whole industrial chain.
In terms of breeding, Youran Dairy utilizes its own dairy cattle breeding technology to cultivate “super dairy cows” with low carbon, high yielding and longevity. SKX, a subsidairy of Youran Dairy, is the largest dairy breeding enterprise in China. By conducting research on important genes or molecular markers related to methane and other carbon emissions in the entire genome data of dairy cows, the aim is to cultivate a low-carbon core herds. It is worth noting that SKX is still the first enterprise in China to use Greenfeed equipment to monitor carbon emissions, which can efficiently screen low-carbon emission sires.
In terms of research and development of low-carbon feed, as the largest ruminant feed producer in China, Youran Dairy has reduced carbon emissions from dairy cows by researching the low-carbon feed for ruminants, exploring and developing the key technologies for healthy and low-carbon farming such as energy and nitrogen balance technology and enzyme engineering nutrition regulation technology. The greenhouse gas emissions from cows were reduced by improving feed conversion rate.
In terms of developing green power, Youran Dairy makes full use of photovoltaic and biogas resources, realizing the use of green power at 100% of dairy farms. At present, Youran Dairy has introduced the mode featured by the complementation of dairy farms and photovoltaic resources in many new projects and realised the green economy of “raising cows in the cowshed with photovoltaic resources on the roof”, which not only reduces the cost of building dairy farms, but also effectively insulates the heat, reduces the temperature of the cowshed and makes cows feel more comfortable, thus satisfying 40% of the electricity consumption of the dairy farms. Youran Dairy has also laid out power generation projects with biogas from the back-end and a dairy farm with 10,000 cows can produce about 6.25 million cubic metres of biogas annually. With an annual power generation of up to 11.5 million kWh, Youran Dairy has realised full power generation, which is capable of satisfying 60% of the electricity consumption of the dairy farms. With photovoltaic and biogas power generation, electricity consumption of dairy farms can be fully satisfied and the use of green power at 100% of dairy farms was realised.
In addition, given to the mode featured by the combination of “planting forage grasses and raising cows”, manures are turn into products of value to create ecological agriculture, which is also a powerful measure for Youran Dairy to reduce carbon consumption and increase efficiency, and to promote the green and low-carbon development of the industry. Youran Dairy has independently researched and developed a fully mixed biogas anaerobic fermentation process and a fully automatic intelligent aerobic fermentation process. Manures are automatically controlled and processed during the process of collection, mixing, solids and slurries separation and fermentation. The system can recycle and reuse all the gases which are generated during the process of fermentation, which can achieve deodorisation effect. Through full power generation from biogas, low-carbon emission reduction was realized. Solid manures after non-hazardous treatment serve as bedding materials, and liquid parts are made into organic fertilisers for land application, which can effectively improve soil fertility and provide sufficient resources for planting high-quality forage grasses.
While exerting its own technological advantages, Youran Dairy also actively cooperated with authoritative institutions and jointly promoted green and low-carbon development through the deep integration of industry-university-research cooperation. Youran Dairy conducted cooperation with the Institute of Agricultural Environment and Sustainable Development of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Institute of Animal Sciences of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and has successively undertaken the “the Research and Application of Comprehensive Technologies on Carbon Neutrality and Carbon Emission Reduction in the Breeding Process on Scaled Dairy Farms” and “the Establishment of the Carbon Emission Monitoring and Alarming Platform and the Demonstration Application of the Low-carbon Feeding Model with Emission Reduction in Cows Breeding” of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’ Republic of China and local authorities to carry out research on low-carbon emission reduction and promote carbon neutral in cows breeding.
And just during the 14th China Dairy Industry Conference, Youran Dairy signed strategic cooperation agreements with the Institute of Animal Sciences, the Institute of of Feed, and the Institute of Grassland of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the cooperation areas include the research on low-carbon in cows breeding and the development of low-carbon feed.
Besides, Youran Dairy also vigorously introduced electric vehicles, air source heat pumps and other new technological equipment. In 2022, ecological intelligent dairy farms in Chilechuan became the first in the industry to use electric vehicles to transport raw milk. Through power electrification and by accelerating the transformation of the energy structure, the company gradually made “Zero-Carbon Dairy Farms” come true and accelerated the pace of “Carbon Neutrality”.
Advanced breeding technologies
Technical supports for biodiversity conservation
Biodiversity loss has been regarded as one of the rapidly deteriorating global risks in the next decade, and a number of ESG rating systems, including MSCI ESG, have taken biodiversity as one of the key indicators. With the advantage of leading breeding technology, Youran Dairy is contributing to promote the sustainable development between species and ecosystems.
It is understood that Youran Dairy established the efficient clone technology system on cows, deer, dairy goats and other animals, to provide technical support for the protection of biodiversity of Inner Mongolian plateau animals and germplasm resources. Saikexing, a subsidairy of Youran Dairy, worked with Inner Mongolia University to co-found a germplasm resource bank, which collects unique and highly adaptable livestock (including cattle, sheep and horses) with characteristics of disease and stress resistance, and wild animal species resources in the Mongolian Plateau covering 168 animal species and over 30,000 samples (including cells, semen, and embryos).
In the meantime, Youran Dairy also focuses on collecting and breeding more than 20 unique farm animals (such as Mongolian cattle, Mongolian sheep, Mongolian horses), and carries out related genetic and breeding application research. Based on the development of new technology of efficient cloning of livestock. In subsequent periods, Youran Dairy will utilize stem cell gene editing, clone breeding and other modern biological breeding technologies to innovatively breed new lines of functionally enhanced dairy cows with specific production performance, disease and stress resistance and adaptability to specific environments, so as to provide the basic genetic material and key technical support for the protection of biodiversity in the region.
“Threading the needle” with digital intelligence
Fully enhance efficiency and sustainability
In addition to technological assistance to corporate ESG practices, Youran Dairy also “threading the needle” with digital intelligence, organically connecting all links of the whole industry chain “from grass to milk”, opening up the five major business segments of breeding, grass, feed, dairy farming and the e-commerce platform of the Jumuc.com, leading the digital and intelligent transformation of the dairy farming industry and comprehensively improving the efficiency of production and operation as well as sustainability.
The most notable one is the Chilechuan Ecological Intelligent Pasture, a green low-carbon tourist dairy farm that crowns the world with its high intelligence built by Youran Dairy, and the introduction of the world’s most advanced intelligent equipments, including unmanned milking robots, feeding robots, feed pusher robots, and dung cleaning robots, which lead the industry to enter the era of “unmanned cattle-raising”.
Through intelligent equipment and management systems, the intelligent cowshed of the Chilechuan Ecological Intelligent Pasture has dramatically increased the yield, production and quality of dairy cows, and improved the efficiency and sustainability of dairy farming, while reducing the costs of labor, feed, water and electricity. According to the data, the average milk yield of dairy cows can be increased by more than 10% under this mode, the estrus rate can be increased by 15%-20%, the breeding rate can be increased by 10%-15%, and the precise spraying is expected to save water by 40% annually.
Besides, as a representative of the new large-scale and intelligent farms of Youran Dairy, Wuwei Farm has achieved a milestone breakthrough in China’s dairy farming industry in the second year of production with a single yield of over 49 kilograms under the lean operation and digitization empowerment. It has been certified as “China’s highest milk production farm per day” and has become the first dairy farm in China with the highest single yield of dairy cows.
Constructing an innovative model for R&D and production of specialty raw milk
Protecting consumers’ health at the source of dairy products
As the leading enterprise in the upstream of dairy industry, Youran Dairy creates a mutually synergistic operation mode of the whole industry chain, achieves the positive cycle with “outstanding breeding brings outstanding cows, fine feed for fine cows and excellent cows producing excellent milk”, and improves the quality of raw milk. Besides, Youran’s quality control from the source is also one of the key reasons why it has received the highest industry rating of MSCI ESG.
Over the years, You Ranch has continued to research and develop and produce high-quality raw milk with high nutritional value to protect the quality, nutrition and health of dairy products from the source, and the nutrition and hygiene indicators of raw milk are much higher than those of Europe and the United States.
Focusing on the increasing diversified nutritional and health needs of consumers, Youran Dairy has successfully constructed the “innovative model for R&D and production of specialty raw milk with high added value”, which makes the dairy products achieve specialized, high-end and refined development through population segmentation, functional segmentation and scene segmentation, and has researched, developed and produced healthy specialty raw milk with high nutritional value and functional properties. Taking DHA, which is known as “Naohuangjin”, as an example, Youran Dairy has studied the metabolism mechanism of DHA in cows and use coating techniques to make DHA efficiently absorbed and converted into raw milk rich in DHA.
After years of in-depth research and development and market practice, Youran Dairy has become the largest specialty raw milk supplier in China, producing a wide range of specialty raw milk, such as organic milk, organic A2 milk, jersey milk, organic jersey milk, A2 milk, original DHA milk and selenium-rich milk.
Looking forward, Youran Dairy stated that it shall continue to insist on the organic combination of commercial value and social value and give full play to the technological advantages of the Group to promote the low-carbon and environmental protection development of the whole industry and accelerate its pace of revitalisation of the dairy industry. Meanwhile, it will also protect the health of the nation with more high-quality raw milk products with high nutritional value and promote the high-quality and sustainable development of the industry.