Falk School Students Consult for Marburger Farm Dairy

That glass of milk is nutritious and refreshing, but how sustainable is it? “People want to purchase items that they know are not harming our planet, and that they know come from a good place,” says Jim Marburger, president of family-run Marburger Farm Dairy.

Marburger Farm Dairy operations meet and exceed a roster of USDA and other industry regulations, but the question of sustainability seemed harder to define and assess for improvement. What questions should they even ask?

Marburger turned to Chatham’s Falk School of Sustainability & Environment for expertise. He was linked up with Falk Chair of Socially Responsible Business Sandra Taylor, who incorporated his query into her course for students in the dual-degree Master of Sustainability + Master of Business Administration program, Sustainability Assessment and Reporting.

“Marburger came to us and wanted us to put together a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report for their suppliers,” explains Taylor Whitehead, MSUS+MBA ’20.  Throughout the course, students asked questions about how Marburger Farm Dairy and their suppliers run their farms and how they could be more sustainable.

The questions—along with key performance indicators—were borrowed from The Sustainability Consortium, a global organization of entities interested in setting standards for consumer goods. The questions were designed to identify sustainability issues across fields in the dairy industry, including animal welfare and nutrition; land use and by-product disposal for feed; emissions of excess nutrients into the water and air; antibiotic use; and milk yield.  

But the questions—which had been developed by specialists—had to go to the farmers, and for many of them, sustainability was a new subject. So students visited two farms to get a sense of real-life practices. “We tried to look at questions from the farmers’ perspective,” said Hannah Rauch, MSUS+MBA ’20. The group reframed their survey questions based on conditions they observed, so that answering them would be as easy for them as possible.

At the end of the course students presented their own CSR report for Marburger. Along with reproducing the survey questions and data, it offered a series of recommendations for suppliers that Marburger can pursue to get tangible results in their sustainability campaign, including monitoring electricity to reduce carbon emissions, increased use of on-site water treatment such as spray irrigation, and the complete enclosure of slurry (animal waste) storage to control release of greenhouse gases.

Rauch said that this experience bolstered her career ambitions. “I’m very interested in sustainable supply chain management, so I think this class was awesome.” 

While comprehensive implementation of these recommendations could take several years, Jim Marburger promised that his company will continue their efforts. The refreshing glass of milk will be increasingly sustainable, and Marburger will have the CSR reports to document their efforts.

Chatham’s MSUS+MBA program is a joint degree from the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment Master of Sustainability (MSUS) program, in partnership with Chatham's Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. It prepares graduates for sustainability management and leadership positions across all sectors including business, government, and NGOs.