Jack Daniel’s producer Brown-Forman takes a long-term view of nature

Preserving biodiversity and other nature-related issues was not part of the initial sustainability plan at Brown-Forman, the Louisville liquor company noted for making Jack Daniel’s. Like most companies, it focused on climate change, seeking ways to reduce energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. 

Over time, however, the company added initiatives to preserve the health of the ecosystems that support the trees and other plants essential to producing its products. The distinctive flavor of Jack Daniel’s, for example, comes from the sugar maple charcoal used to filter the distilled mash of corn, rye and barley, and to make the charred white oak barrels it is aged in. 

“White oak takes 50 to 70 years to mature, so we needed to take a long-term perspective,” explained Andy Battjes, Brown-Forman’s director of global environmental sustainability. “As we were looking ahead we asked ourselves, Will we have the agricultural and forestry commodities we need to grow our business?”

Long-term thinking about nature wasn’t new to Brown-Forman, a publicly traded company still controlled by descendants of its founding family. Twenty-five years ago, in collaboration with the University of Tennessee, the company funded the creation of a seed orchard that now has 60 acres devoted to nurturing nearly a dozen species of trees, including the sugar maple. And, in 2012, Brown-Forman allocated a portion of the proceeds from the sale of a winery to create DendriFund, a nonprofit devoted to sustainability, that supports some of its conservation efforts. 

The plan

Preserve white oaks

In 2017, Brown-Forman and DendriFund backed what the White Oak Initiative, a coalition to reverse the declining population of the trees. The organization promotes sustainable forestry practices and lobbies for government research and assistance.

As Brown-Forman has worked with its white oak growers, it is increasingly highlighting the benefits of biodiversity.

“You can’t just go out and plant a bunch of white oaks in rows,” Battjes said. “They just don’t grow that way. They need to be in mixed hardwood stands. The white oak is a keystone species that is an important part of the food cycle for a lot of creatures.”

Bring rye cultivation back to Kentucky

Today, most of the rye used in distilling is grown in Canada and Europe. Brown-Forman is trying to convince local farmers that planting the crop again can be lucrative. The company is supporting field trials and explaining how rye can be grown as a cover crop that will enrich their soil and potentially earn credits for carbon sequestration. 

Promote sustainable agave production

Brown-Forman, which owns El Jimado and other brands of tequila, is also dependent on the production of agave, succulents that can take five years to mature. Growing demand for these plants has led to a problematic conversion of forests into agave farms, so Brown-Forman is requiring the fields it leases to be certified that they haven’t contributed to forest loss. The company is also working with Mexican universities to optimize production, increase yields, make the crop more resistant to pests and disease and reduce the need for synthetic pesticides that harm other species and generate greenhouse gasses.

Reduce water consumption in areas where supply is constrained

While there are ample water supplies in Kentucky and Tennessee, where the whisky crops are grown, many areas of Mexico have arid climates and experience frequent dry spells. Accordingly, Brown-Forman has looked to reduce the volume of water used in its facilities, by acquiring more efficient manufacturing equipment when possible and using wastewater for cooling (when there’s no risk of product contamination).

The challenges

Measuring effectiveness

Brown-Forman is finding it difficult to measure the effectiveness of its nature initiatives, which can make it challenging to justify the expenditures.

“If I implement an energy efficiency project I can say that I cut electricity use by, say 10 percent,” Battjes said. “I don’t know how you measure biodiversity.”

Even with water use, which can be measured, the context must be considered. “Saving a gallon of water in Kentucky doesn’t equate to saving a gallon in California,” he explained. 

Working with suppliers

As Brown-Forman generally does not own the farms and forests that produce its raw materials, most of its nature efforts require collaboration with independent growers, who are understandably concerned about the expense and risk of adopting new practices. 

“There are a lot of suppliers that understand the importance of doing these things, but they are asking who is going to pay for it,” Battjes said. The answers are not straightforward, as the growers will need to make investments that may not produce a return for decades.

“We’re not asking them to plant something now that they’ll get value from when they harvest it next year,” Battjes said. “In forestry, the payoff may not be for 30 years, so how do we incentivize that?”

The cost of transparency

Independent assessments of Brown-Forman’s sustainability efforts by Ceres and the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBI) have generally rated it lower than other beverage companies. For example, in 2023 the WBI assigned Brown-Forman a 17 rating on a 100-point scale, noting that “it lacks policies/measurable targets to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and assess its impacts and dependencies on nature.”

Battjes said that these ratings, in part, reflect the company’s decision not to invest in the data collection and reporting needed to respond to requests for information from these groups.

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