You can’t escape hearing about carbon markets, as they are becoming more complex. With the mission to become carbon neutral by 2050 the dairy industry is passionately committed to better caring for their environment. This is resulting in more conversations on capturing dairy’s carbon footprint.
At the Professional Dairy Producers (PDP) Annual Business Meeting in Wisconsin Dells, Wis., dairy producer, JJ Pagel, a PDP board member and owner and operator of Pagel’s Ponderosa Dairy, spoke on his journey to measuring his farm’s carbon footprint during a 2023 carbon pilot program.
“As dairy producers, we work every day to achieve sustainable milk production. But when it comes to demonstrating progress, industry has been handicapped by the absence of standardized metrics,” Pagel says.
PDP recently launched a program called Your Farm – Your Footprint to help producers prove how they are reducing their farm’s environmental impact.
Shelly Mayer, PDP’s executive director, shared how Your Farm – Your Footprint allows farmers to measure carbon and methane emissions to help them make informed decisions while retaining control of their data. Your Farm – Your Footprint was led by 11 fellow dairy farmers who tested the program.
Wisconsin dairy farmer, Mitch Breunig, owner of Mystic Valley Dairy, says that to be sustainable farmers need to save the planet, the people and be profitable.
“If we’re not profitable we’re not going to be sustainable,” he said and showed excitement with the PDP program, saying that if farmers can find an alternative profit source that will help with the profitability portion of the sustainability equation. “I want to have another revenue source on my farm that isn’t pushing for more and I think that sustainability is the place for that.”
Next Steps
So how can producers begin the journey to make carbon a revenue source? Mayer says the first step is for producers to measure their carbon footprint. This must happen before anyone can analyze the data performance and before anyone can reap the financial rewards that can come with that.
Pagel says that by partaking in the program, he now can confidently tell people the carbon impact his farm is making. For example, Pagel says they were able to save 352 truckloads of soil by putting in cover crops.
“We were able to get 686 passenger cars off the road in a year through planting cover crops and minimum till,” he said. “It’s a way to show people what we are doing them and put it in a way that they can understand.”
Pagel says information from the “Your Farm – Your Footprint” program is allowing producers to understand what they can do to make their dairies better each and every day.
Mayer says PDP works with many partners whose values align with trust-worthy companies. She shared that a third-party expert, Sustainable Environment Consultants (SEC), works with participating dairy producers to collect and analyze data that is readily available for most farms.
SEC will use resources like Cool Farm Tool, COMET-Farm and FARM Environmental Stewardship, which take into consideration farm-specific information like location, soil type, crop rotation, energy use, nutrient management, milk production, cow numbers, field yields and other farm-specific data. Analyses include existing practices a farm may already be implementing to reduce emissions and improve carbon sequestration.
Farm-specific sustainability reports include a carbon footprint score — calculating carbon emissions per unit of fat and protein-corrected milk. This score is an asset to producers, providing a baseline for measuring and demonstrating progress. Most importantly, the individual farm score is confidential and will not be shared unless the producer chooses to do so.
Pagel shared that one advantage of the Your Farm – Your Footprint program is the peer groups that enable producers of all sizes and geographies to compare experiences, learn from one another and brainstorm in a safe, confidential environment.
To learn more and to sign up about Your Farm – Your Footprint program, visit https://pdpw.org/your-farm-your-footprint/
