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| greenhouse gas dairy farm research project |
The five-year project was announced Tuesday by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack who was in Madison for a tour of the USDA's Dairy Forage Research Center on the UW-Madison campus.
The goal is to find ways to reduce greenhouse gases from dairy operations, including methane gas released from manure.
UW-Madison is leading the project and will work with researchers and staff from six other universities, five federal laboratories, and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy to improve dairy production efficiency and decrease the negative effects of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.
"This is about adaptation - how to move agriculture forward to be as productive as possible as we move into a changing climate," said Matt Ruark, a UW-Madison assistant professor and University of Wisconsin-Extension soils specialist.
The dairy industry, through the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% in the next seven years. Some of the pressure is coming from Walmart Corp. that buys massive amounts of milk and dairy products for its stores.
"Walmart has a big environmental sustainability push going on. They leaned fairly heavily on the dairy industry and identified milk as one of the top-six products they stock in stores that have a very negative environmental footprint. That really brought the industry to the table," said Ray Knighton, project manager at USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Every aspect of a dairy farm will be covered in the research, including methane from manure. In some cases, dairy cows will be placed in air-controlled chambers where their manure will be weighed and the gases emitted will be measured.
Much of the work will be done on university-owned farms and federal agriculture research stations.
"The idea is to get very detailed data . . . these kinds of measurements are incredibly expensive," Knighton said.
"We will work with enough animals to get a statistically representative sample," he added.
Scientists have spent decades studying cow manure as a waste product, a fertilizer used to grow crops and, more recently, as an energy source used to generate electricity and heat buildings.
This research goes deeper into the entire life-cycle of a dairy farm, from growing crops to producing milk.
"We have done this (previously) in smaller, incremental pieces. But this is tackling the problem on a regional basis," Knighton said, adding that the research will be representative of about 48% of the U.S. dairy industry.
Currently, greenhouse gases from dairy farms aren't limited under federal regulations. Large farms must report emissions under community right-to-know laws.
"And there are things in the works that could be regulated in the near future, once the Environmental Protection Agency comes up with methods of estimating emissions from animal operations," Knighton said.
The research findings could help farmers become more profitable, since excess greenhouse gases are a sign that a farm isn't efficient enough with things such as animal feed and fertilizers.
"Anything we can do to reduce losses of carbon, nitrogen and water from the (ecology) system can lead to greater efficiency. This will lead to more profit for the producer, less impact on the environment, and a sustainable milk supply for the consumer," said Ruark with UW-Madison.
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