U.S. dairy operations continue to make great strides when it comes to sustainability, but they’ve always used regenerative practices. For instance, this corn field was cut for silage. Now the cow manure will be recycled, put on this land to replenish crop nutrients and improve soil health dairies like Modak Dairy in South Dakota produce hundreds of thousands of gallons of manure annually and view it as a real value for their operation.
“We spend $50,000 a year on commercial fertilizer. The rest all goes through the cattle and comes back out as a byproduct, which is a good product for the land and everything else,” says Jim Moe, co-owner of Modak Dairy.
Moe says dairymen also promote soil health through increased biological activity and increased organic matter in the soil.
“To me, it makes the land more fertile and it holds moisture a lot better because of the fertility,” he adds.
At Cool-Lawn Farm in Virginia, dairy producer Ben Smith says they manage manure on every inch of their field as part of their nutrient management plans.
“We soil test every year or every other year depending on the field and the crop rotation,” Smith says. “We grid sample everything, even pasture and hay ground. We grid sample because we want to put those nutrients exactly where they need to be. And, furthermore, they’re expensive. So, we don’t want to just do a blanket application. We want to put them where they need to be. And when properly managed, manure also results in higher crop production.
We got land that’s further away that we can’t put the manure on. That’s 10, 12 miles away that we use commercial fertilizer on and we don’t get the yields and we don’t have the soil condition.”
Smith says dairy producers are the original up-cyclers, taking manure which was once considered a waste product and turning it into an asset.
“It is a valuable product because we can use it as a fertilizer, as bedding, as a product that can produce energy. That’s just three things off the top of my head that makes manure value added. The newest value comes from turning that manure into energy. We’re putting in a methane digester - that’s to come here in the next 12 to 24 months. But that will take all of our manure and local food waste and we’ll use that to make renewable natural gas,” he says.
In addition, dairy producers like Smith are improving soil health by integrating cover crops on nearly every acre.
“Everything behind corn we drill rye or triticale. Sometimes we’ll incorporate radishes, clover or turnips. We want everything to have a cover crop on it all winter long to prevent runoff, soil erosion and nutrient leaching,” Smith says.
Those cover crops can also be grazed which sequesters carbon and breaks down crop residue. And it’s through all of these regenerative practices that dairy operations can not only flip their soil, but be part of the solution to climate change.
