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

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

Summary

Eleven advisory members of this project attended a project kick-off meeting in which the project objectives were set and approach and specific methods were discussed. The mass nutrient balance (MNB) approach and whole farm analysis agro-environmental indicator (AEI) methods proposed for use in this project were presented and discussed. We developed a list of specific software tool needs and specified the design needs of such tools for widespread adoption of AEI’s by the farm advising audience. This team meeting was followed by several productive follow-up meetings with key individuals to discuss, in more detail, indicators relevant to their area of expertise.

The next step was local meetings with the county collaborators and the farmers and their advisor. The first farm meeting was attended by the local field crops extension educators, the farm crop consultant (a certified crop advisor and nutrient management planner) and the dairy farmer. In advance, the farm had completed a whole farm mass balance and additional herd and field indicators were calculated as well. In the meeting the farmer indicated he wanted to know more about his herd indicators and why these efficiency indicators may have been lower than he had expected. As a next step, the farmer will have the dairy feed salesperson take a few forage analyses prior to our next meeting. The farm’s dairy consultant was interested in the relatively low fertilizer purchases compared to other farms and decided to run the Illinois Soil Nitrogen Test (ISNT) and corn stalk nitrate test (CSNT) on corn fields this coming cropping year to determine which corn fields are receiving enough nutrients through a combination of fertilizer and manure.

The dairy farmer also made suggestions for additional AEI’s linking the current feeding efficiencies with particular economic indicators. This suggestion was connected with a concurrent project that is investigating the economic drivers of the MNB and AEI’s.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Four small dairy farms, through the use of the 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 the whole-farm analysis and 15 additional farms will start implementing changes to improve nutrient use efficiency by the end of the project.

Accomplishments/Milestones

1.) A research team will be formed for each participating farm made up of the farmer, county extension educator, and Cornell campus staff. This team will complete baseline, year one and year two whole-farm analysis to identify nutrient use efficiency, carbon status and energy use. The annual results will be used to identify and implement changes to improve nutrient, carbon and energy use efficiency during the second and third year. Efficiency gains will be quantified at the end of three years. (3 years)

9/20/2008 – Attended meeting of the Precision Feeding Management group, a group of county extension educators, farm nutritionists and animal scientists that are currently working on a set of herd nutrition indicators to discuss their connection with the Mass Nutrient Balance, the process for calculating each indicator and evaluation guides for each.

10/1/2008 – Advisory Team Meeting: Held a team meeting which all key individual’s listed for the grant were able to attend. Presented the results of previous research that led to the development of the AEI approach and held open discussions on methods for proceeding with the current project.

11/6/2008 – Held on-farm meeting with Chuck and Andra Benson, organic dairy farmers. They had expressed interest in the grant and Caroline Rasmussen and Patty Ristow met with them to discuss the purpose and objectives of the project. They are interested in continuing with the project and a follow up meeting is scheduled for January, 2009 to conduct the farm’s first Mass Nutrient Balance, which will define the baseline for the farm.

11/15/2008 – Met with Chuck Nicholson to conduct a follow-up meeting to the large Advisory Team Meeting held on 10/1/2008. Discussed in more detail the system’s perspective and scope of the current project and also to further discuss the role Chuck would like to play in this project.

11/27/2008 – Met with Joanna Green to follow-up after the large Advisory Team Meeting held on 10/1/2008. Discussed opportunities and requirements for publishing project articles in the Small Farm’s Quarterly, of which Joanna is editor. The first article was designed and is planned to be completed for the spring issue of the SFQ.

12/2/2008 – Met with Fay Benson as a follow-up meeting to the large Advisory Team Meeting held on 10/1/2008. Discussed opportunities for Fay to accompany Patty Ristow to farm meetings held on the small and organic dairies that he has long-standing relationships with as a farm advisor to help engage these farmers in open discussion of the AEI results.

12/15/2008 – Meeting with Larry Chase and Mike van Amburgh as a follow-up to the large Advisor Team Meeting held on 10/1/2008. Discussed in detail the equations currently used to calculate whole farm and herd AEI’s and discussed the practical ‘next steps’ that would be taken after a Mass Nutrient Balance and other whole farm AEI’s are tabulated for case-study farms.

12/17/2008- On-farm meeting with Marc Laribee of Grace-way farms, Joe Lawrence, Cornell Cooperative Extension Field Crops Educator in Lewis County and Peg Cook, Crop Consultant for Grace-way Farm. Discussed in detail the objectives of the project and develop the next steps for the farm.

11/1/2008:12/31/2008 – Working with Carl Tillinghast (Cornell Cooperative Extension of Franklin County) and new bi-county Field Crops Extension Educator Stephen Canner (St Lawrence and Franklin Counties) to identify a new farm for the project. The Franklin county farm originally listed in the project needed to back out of the project due to management issues between the two farm partners.

2.) The team will assess the farm data for potential internal (herd and cropping) system efficiency indicators and a list of data pages will be generated. This information will be used to develop and implement record keeping systems (farm specific) to address data gaps. A protocol will be developed to calculate and interpret each of the herd and cropping efficiency indicators that are feasible with data found or generated easily on the four small farms and this will become part of the annual assessments (3 years).

12/17/2008 – On-farm meeting with Marc Laribee of Grace-way farms, Joe Lawrence, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Lewis County Field Crops Educator and Peg Cook, Crop Consultant for Grace-way Farm. Reviewed a four-year set of farm AEI’s based on data that were mined from the farm’s previously collected MNB’s. Discussed the results with the farmer and his advising team, identified data gaps and data uncertainties, identified next steps, contacting farm feed sales person and nutritionist, silo density testing and forage analysis on the feed management side, and ISNT and CSNT testing on the crop management side.

12/15/2008 – Concurrently with the development of the Grace-way farm indicator report a list was developed of data management needs and software tool requirements for easing data entry and improving data summarization and reporting for an AEI indicator system that works together with the current Mass Nutrient Balance Data. The development of this process and tools are integral to development of a transferrable and teachable protocol for use by farm advisors.

3.) Four Extension educators will gain skills and experience throughout this process in data collection and whole farm analysis. They will collaborate with university staff to provide training for fellow extension educators at bi-annual field crop extension retreats (1-2 day events). A total of 15 dairy and field crop extension educators will be educated on implementation and interpretation of whole farm analysis through these professional retreats (2 years).

12/2/2008-12/2/2008 – Met with Fay Benson as a follow-up meeting to the large Advisory Team Meeting held on 10/1/2008. Discussed opportunities for Fay to accompany Patty Ristow to farm meetings held on the small and organic dairies that he has long-standing relationships with as a farm advisor to help engage these farmers in open discussion of the AEI results.

12/17/2008 – On-farm meeting with Marc Laribee of Grace-way Farm, Joe Lawrence, Field Crops Extension Educator of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Lewis County to discuss the details of the project. The meeting was successfully organized and facilitated by Joe Lawrence through pre-meeting communication between Joe Lawrence, Patty Ristow and Caroline Rasmussen.

12/18/2008 – Mass Nutrient Balance interpretation meeting organized and facilitated by Janice Degni, Cortland County Cooperative Extension Educator, Patty Ristow, Karl Czymmek and Caroline Rasmussen. Five farmers participated in a discussion of their farm-specific MNB and newly reported herd and cropping system AEI’s. Newly developed herd and cropping system AEI’s were discussed in relationship to the whole farm AEI, the MNB.

4.) The most relevant AEI indicators will be included in the MNB Project annual mass balance assessments in which 75 small farms participate. Of these 75 farms it is expected that at least 15 farmers will implement management changes, the results of which will be tracked through annual assessments that are part of the Mass Nutrient Balance Program.

12/12/2008 – 2008 Mass Nutrient Balance reports were sent out to 85 farmers. The reports included new herd and crop AEI’s that had been developed as a result of a previous case-study project. These indicators were found to be helpful in whole farm analysis during the on-farm meetings with Marc Laribee and also in the MNB meetings held in Cortland County NY.

5.) Four farm/project impact reports will be published in popular press journals such as Northeast Dairy Business, Small Farms Quarterly, County Folks, and Farming magazines (1 year, over years 2 and 3). It is expected that these articles will be read by at least 35% of the small dairy farmers in New York State. In addition the results of this research will be published in a scientific peer-reviewed publication.

11/27/2008 – Met with Joanna Green to follow-up after the large Advisory Team Meeting held on 10/1/2008. Discussed opportunities and requirements for publishing project articles in the Small Farm’s Quarterly, of which Joanna is editor. The first article was designed and is planned to be completed for the spring issue of the SFQ.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

We developed a good working relationship among the eleven campus members (the nine originally listed in the grant plus Mike van Amburgh and Caroline Rasmussen) through the first full team meeting and the follow-up meetings. We developed a common understanding of our project objectives, goals, and everyone’s role in the project.

Held a successful farm meeting at Grace-way Farm. The meeting engaged the farmer in the project and spurred him to engage his feed sales person and nutritionist in the project. Provided the first training opportunity for two farm advisors to use the AEI system.

Meetings are scheduled for January-February with the additional three farms in the project.

Provided mass balance reports the included three new AEIs to 85 farmers.

Collaborators: