Announcing the DSF Annual Sustainability Progress Report – 2025 Calendar Year

The Dairy Sustainability Framework (DSF) has released its latest annual report, demonstrating the global sector’s progress across 11 environmental, social and economic criteria. DSF members account for about ~30% of global milk production, or 52% of the world’s formal dairy cow and buffalo milk production.

• A membership of 1,374 organisations provides 642,153 farms and 35.3 million cows and buffalo, producing 273 billion litres of milk.
• In 2025, DSF Member reported milk volume grew by 3% against 2024, driven by a combination of increased production by existing members and new members joining the Framework.

 

Progress highlights

• Animal Care remains the top member priority Criteria. Average somatic cell counts have fallen each year since 2022, and as the transition across to the new indicator completes, with 38% of farms already implementing the now required Animal Health & Welfare Plan.
• Management Plans are growing across all Criteria that use this indicator to quantify progress.
• Product Safety: 100% of organisations that prioritised this criteria reported a Product Safety Assessment and Recall Plan.
• Rural Economies: Members reported about US $118 billion in payments to farmers an increase of US $14.24 billion from 2024 results, with the average global milk price rising from US $0.50 to US $0.55 per litre.
• Levels of employee gender reporting for farms and the milk processing sector continues to provide a more accurate gender focussed employment picture.

What’s new this year

• Five-year trendline analysis continues to clearly demonstrate the global dairy sector’s sustainability progress.
• Cow versus buffalo differentiation, recognising the DSF’s membership growth across Asia.
• The final report applying somatic cell count as the indicator for Animal Care. The number of forward-looking Animal Health & Welfare Plans only, will be reported starting with the 2026 calendar year report.

Download your copy of the 2025 calendar year reporting DSF Annual Sustainability Progress.  Translations will be available in Chinese, French, Hindi, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish shortly.