Sustainable farming has never been more important. Not only can prioritizing sustainability be beneficial to the environment and public perception, but also to your long-term success and bottom line.
In February 2025, three dairy producers discussed “Innovations driving sustainability on dairy farms” during the Southwestern Ontario Dairy Symposium that took place in Woodstock, Ontario. The panel included Korb Whale of Clovermead Farms and Mapleton’s Organic, from Alma; Steve Veldman of Velrob Farms Ltd., from Embro; and Dan Breen of Breen Acres Family Farm Inc., from Putnam. Each shared their on-farm sustainability objectives, insights and thoughts for the future.
Introductions and innovations
Clovermead Farms/Mapleton’s Organic: For seven generations, the Whale family has held a sustainability mindset. Focusing on reducing waste, reusing materials and maximizing resources is part of their long-term strategic plan. One of their first projects included installing an anaerobic digester in 2010 to convert their manure into fertilizer, energy and bedding. In 2014, they were awarded the DFC Sustainability Award because of their years of sustainable practices – for example, planting 50,000 trees around the perimeter of the farm through lowlands and around streams to protect soil and waterways. Whale’s side project [Mapleton’s Organic] allows them to produce a product using the milk on the farm which completes the journey – from crop to animal to product and back to the consumer. The long-term recipe for success (and for the dairy industry) includes people, profit and planet. Whale says he believes sustainability includes environmental responsibility, economic viability and community well-being that will ensure the farm’s legacy for future generations. They are also currently one of the pilot farms for DFC’s “Cool Farm” tool to help calculate a farm’s carbon footprint.
Velrob Farms Ltd.: Veldman and his wife, Carol, have been farming for 40 years. They have one daughter, three sons – two of whom are currently involved on the farm – and eight grandchildren. They have always had a strong commitment to sustainability. The goal is to leave the land in better shape than when they got it, and they do this by focusing on soil conservation, energy efficiency and minimizing environmental impact. In 2018, they built a fully electric, energy-efficient dairy barn that features automated milking, feeding and bedding delivery, including solar panels that offset the hydro bill. Their “low-hanging fruit” was to install a heat recovery system for water heating that cut their hot water consumption by 50%. Veldman also developed a more effective milk plate cooler setup to improve milk cooling efficiency. By pumping milk into the bottom of the plates and slowing the flow, contact time is increased while energy required decreases. In 2006, they completed an energy audit to ensure they have done everything possible for conservation, so they could then focus on green energy generation.
Breen Acres Family Farms Inc.: A fourth-generation dairy and crop producer, Breen works alongside his daughter Vanessa and her husband, Ryan. He emphasizes taking a holistic approach to sustainability, as it is complex and ever-changing. Since their fire in 1982, they’ve grown from 20 to 140 kilograms of quota, sustaining 80 cows and up to 1,100 acres. Sustainable soil management practices include 35 years of no-till (allowing for deeper root penetration and improved nutrient uptake) and 20 years of cover cropping (improving soil diversity and resiliency). They view soil as a living organism – it must be fed and protected – so they leave it alone as much as possible to limit compaction. Animal welfare is also at the forefront. Cows are housed in canvas-roofed barns, (some using repurposed materials) providing a cool environment for them to thrive along with attention to quality feed, comfort, cleanliness and calmness. They take a minimalist and efficient approach to farming and believe the closer they can get to mimicking nature, the closer they get to sustainability. He encourages the industry to share knowledge and teach the next generation for sustainable long-term success.
Q. What was your pathway to sustainability?
WHALE: My farming career started in 2000 after graduating with a degree in civil engineering. I had done a couple of projects on anaerobic digestion and thought it was a great idea but couldn’t make a way to make it economically feasible until the Green Energy Act came out and gave us contracts. I like the idea of turning manure into something more valuable. We’ve moved on from energy production and make solar and biogas energy. Nutrient management and soil health is critical, so we’ve also adopted no-till. We dragline our digestate onto the field to help reduce compaction, and we plant a lot of trees for water conservation. I guarantee that in the next five to 10 years, we will be talking about water conservation and biodiversity as key things us farmers will be contributing to society.
VELDMAN: When we took over the farm, it was wintertime and our barn was a single story with direct-drive fans – a beautiful quiet barn – but as the temperatures started to rise, our variable-speed fans started speeding up and were very noisy. The following year, we pulled them out and put in turkey curtains. We still had the incandescent hot lights. I don't think there's a light that’s been developed that we haven't put in our barns, but we have good lights now. It's been a work in progress and got to the point where we couldn't think of anything else to do, so that’s when we got the energy audit done to move on to energy generation.
BREEN: When my dad asked me if I was coming home to farm, we were relatively small, and the machinery was worn out. I had to try to find a way to grow crops as economically as possible. My first attempt at growing a crop with zero tillage was not to make the world a better place but to simply survive and look at economic returns. We were putting rye after corn silage long before I'd ever seen it and it was simply to produce more with less acres. At first, it was for heifer feed only, but one year we had a shortage of alfalfa and so I fed rye to my cows, and it grew from there. No two farms have the same economic situation, nor the same resources, nor the same soil type, but the fundamentals apply to all of us. We now have a surplus of acres, which gives us a lot more flexibility in the length of rotation, increased biodiversity and the opportunity to leave a large portion of our cover crops. Leaving the cover crop lets the crop drop back down into the soil, and we can build organic matter quicker.
Q. Can you describe how becoming sustainable can be profitable?
WHALE: Virtually all projects that we do in our farm have a return on investment. If we're preaching sustainability, we’re supposed to do it for the good of society, and that’s great that society benefits, but we need to benefit as a business owner too. It could be everything from water management to heat management to using resources properly. The biggest impact we could make on our environmental sustainability is in our barns – making our animals the most efficient they can be, giving them good feed, so that we're getting the most milk out of the animals we've got. Check your heifer inventory, don’t carry extra heifers. Choose sires that have a good methane efficiency index and good feed efficiency index. Over the next 30 years, you’ll reduce your methane output by 30% to 40% just through genetic selection; you don’t have to spend an extra dollar.
VELDMAN: If you’re going to start somewhere, don't start with energy generation because it takes 10 to 15 years for it to pay for itself. Start with conservation because that’s usually paid back in months. In the future, I’m just wondering how we can collaborate [as an industry] and share our knowledge. There’s got to be a way, as a group of dairy farmers, that we can collaborate and learn from what other people have done for mistakes and what's worked – then everybody starts at a higher level and the whole industry can move further ahead because of it.
BREEN: I would encourage all of you to look for opportunities that exist on your farms already. I was told early on that it's always better to be better before you get bigger, so that's the way we approach it. We put in two used robots so we can get more milk with the existing barn that we have without an addition or more structures. More structures mean more animals, more feed, more storage, and it snowballs from there. We're trying to get as much out of each acre and as much out of each cow in a sustainable way; that’s the driving force for us first and foremost.
Q. How can the rest of the supply chain support farmers in their sustainability journey?
WHALE: Realistically, there's no way we’re there yet [net zero commitment] with the technology we have, but it is possible. Twenty years ago, you didn't know you'd have a supercomputer in your pocket, and now we don't leave home without it. We have 25 years to get to net zero. We have time, so all we need to do is start picking the low-hanging fruit and do our bit.
VELDMAN: The rest of the supply chain is integral, but a lot of these projects cost money and take time. We need to know that there's some assurance that these projects are going to be valuable throughout the supply chain. We need to give dairy farmers the opportunity to pick what's good for their farm, and I think the industry needs to find a way to measure it and report it. A collective approach is the way to move as an industry.
BREEN: In my opinion, as farmers we have the capacity to be better than net zero. We can store carbon in our soils. Net zero to me is the first step.
Q. What future sustainability projects do you have that you are most excited about?
WHALE: Ten years ago, we had a 120% replacement rate, and my goal is to get down to 60%. We’re in the 80s now, so I would love to get efficient enough and have good enough longevity to reach 60%. On the energy side, we want to become completely energy self-sufficient. We currently produce enough electricity for seven farms our size (on the digester) and two-and-a-half on the solar panels, but I still have to buy fuel. So I'd love to be able to create my own fuel or to electrify the fleet; I don't know which is going to come first.
VELDMAN: If I could do my dream project, it would be called “What's the feasibility of using CO2 as a refrigerant to cool milk on Canadian dairy farms?” I think it is the most environmentally friendly refrigerant produced, it’s commercially available and the cheapest. It has a higher efficiency than the synthetic refrigerants, but the angle that I would look at is that it runs at higher pressures and temperatures. With a good heat recovery system, would dairy producers even need a hot water heater in their milkhouse with a CO2 system?
BREEN: I think that we can continue to do a better job with soils and understand them on a deeper level to find a perfect cocktail. Maximizing my manure, growing nutrients, looking at new varieties of cover crops – there's not really one project; it’s just growing on what we’ve already started to make it better.
Final thoughts
No two dairy operations are the same, but the fundamentals apply to all. The panel concluded with Breen saying, “My conclusion for all of us producers is to be grateful for where you are, have that natural curiosity to see what the future might hold and be hopeful that the future is going to be better than today – not that today's bad, but just that the future is endless.”
