After DMK CEO Ingo Müller welcomed the guests, the evening started with a keynote speech by Prof. Dr. Franz-Theo Gottwald (Honorary Professor of Agricultural, Nutritional and Environmental Ethics, Humboldt University Berlin) on the challenges and opportunities of the transformation of agriculture. Following this, Henrike Schirmacher (editor-in-chief Agrifood.Table/Table.Media) moderated a fascinating panel discussion with guests including Stefan Wenzel (Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research), Dr Robert Kecskes (market researcher/senior insights director at GfK), Amos Venema (farmer and influencer at MyKuhTube) and Lisa Mammen-Annas (senior manager for business acceleration and innovation at DMK). Afterwards, the guests had the opportunity to ask questions and engage in dialogue over a creative snack made with milk ingredients and created by chef and flavour artist Heiko Antoniewicz.
CEO Ingo Müller: ‘We at the DMK Group want exchange and objective dialogue. These days, we often see exaggerated fear-inducing images that are used to identify the presumed good and bad in an increasingly complex world. However, the world is not black and white, and we will not make a difference if “shaming” often seems more important than real and meaningful solutions. Change can only be achieved together. This is how we handle our many sustainability initiatives, and it is also what our new dialogue format 'All at one table' stands for.
Fact-based information and dialogue as the key
As the largest dairy cooperative in Germany, an important agricultural player and one of the main suppliers to the German food retail, the DMK Group is committed to shaping the dairy industry of the future in a sustainable and responsible way. The company has already taken numerous measures to achieve this: from expanding its portfolio to include vegan products, reducing packaging waste and food waste, to implementing extensive energy and water efficiency projects in its plants, converting its own milk collection truck fleet to the climate-friendly fuel bio-LNG, and testing emission reduction measures at four pilot farms.
The motto is: Take action.
As a company that takes its responsibility seriously, the DMK Group is far from being ‘perfect’ or having achieved its goals. In fact, it is inevitable to break new ground in many areas when working towards a goal of such enormous change. This makes clear that sustainable change takes time, considering that a system has been created in agriculture that has contributed significantly to food security in Germany over the past 70 years. Now, a new kind of learning is needed to find answers to the big questions of our time, such as climate protection, biodiversity or the future of nutrition. The DMK Group is also addressing this with formats like yesterday in Berlin, actively seeking to work together with others and across its own industry boundaries.
Further details on the DMK Group's measures and initiatives can be found in the responsibility report.
