Use of Whole Farm Analysis to Reduce Nutrient Losses, Improve Nutrient Cycling, Carbon Status and Energy Use on Small Dairies in New York State

• 2008 annual report
• 2009 annual report
• 2010 annual report
• 2011 annual report

Small dairy farms participating in the New York Mass Nutrient Balance Project (MNB project) expressed a need for easy to use tools to understand and improve upon their farm mass balances. Quantification of the impacts of management changes on nutrient losses, carbon status and energy use on dairy farms is currently prohibitively costly due to lack of an understanding of linkages among management practices and nutrient, carbon and energy cycling and easily implementable evaluation tools. We recently development Agro-Environmental Indicators (AEI’s) for large dairies but small farms in the MNB project (75 of the 100 farms in this project are small farms) told us they are interested in the use of such evaluation tools as well but might not have the same farm information to work with as large farms. We propose to develop, in close collaboration with four small farms and an interdisciplinary team of researchers and staff, a set of AEI’s that can be assessed on small dairy farms (organic and non-organic grazing farms, and non-grazing farms). These AEI’s will help farmers decide what future changes to make for the greatest improvements in farm sustainability. Basing the AEI’s on existing or easily obtainable farm data will allow for most effective record-keeping. Four small dairy farms will, through the use of AEI-based whole farm analysis, implement management changes that resulted in improved nutrient use efficiency and farm energy use. Four county extension educators will become well-versed in the AEI-based data collection and whole farm analysis process with an additional eleven county educators being trained at bi-annual extension retreats. Seventy-five small farms will use the new AEI’s through the voluntary MNB program. At least 35% (combination of MNB farmer meetings and popular press articles) of the small dairy farms in New York will become aware of the project and the benefits of whole-farm analyses and 15 additional farms will start implementing changes to improve nutrient use efficiency by the end of the project.