As winter retreated this year, my 5-year-old son made a peculiar observation as we drove through the countryside on our way into town. He said, “Look at all the crops growing in the fields. I don’t remember seeing a planting tractor though.”
He was right; there hadn’t been farm equipment in the fields yet. Despite a mild winter, it was still far too early for fieldwork to begin. His scrutiny of the fields gave way to a more important conversation – one about farmers’ pledge to the land and longevity of their businesses, and how a practice like cover cropping aids in that.
The conversation is becoming far more prominent, and not just with those young minds in the back of their mom’s minivan.
As global climate commitments and net zero pledges crowd the agriculture sector, farmers, cooperatives and food companies are all joining in the conversation on the critical role of the dairy industry to meet those sustainability goals. At the forefront of those conversations is the interest in carbon market opportunities.
Sure, it’s the anaerobic digesters capturing methane and working with a third-party vendor to sell renewable natural gas through markets like California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard or the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard programs. This is the most vetted and mature carbon market available, but there’s so much more. Feed ingredients to minimize enteric methane emissions, as well as improved cropping and soil management to mitigate a greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint are growing practices farmers can implement as part of their business plan.
Just as there are a number of opportunities to participate in the carbon market, there are just as many questions about it: What approved practices can one apply to their dairy? What current on-farm practices are accepted? What determines eligibility of a certain program? How are credits generated? What financing is available?
In this issue of Progressive Dairy, we wanted to take the reins of that conversation for a moment and share experts’ advice and insight into GHG mitigation while also highlighting the work dairy producers across the country are doing on their farms and with herds of all sizes.
The opportunities are vast in the carbon market space – from soil conservation in the fields to feed management at the bunk – and if there’s currently not a financial reward for practices, that doesn’t mean it won’t hold monetary value in the future. Topics such as the use of feed additives, calculating a carbon intensity score and knowing a farm’s carbon footprint are all dissected in this issue. I’m by no means an expert in this space, so I can’t express enough gratitude to those in the industry who articulated these concepts so clearly.
Here are the articles that dive deeper into this topic:
- Carbon intensity in dairy: Measuring and managing for a greener future
- Feed additives: The next frontier of the dairy industry’s sustainability journey
- Carbon accounting opportunities for any size farm
I spoke with several dairy producers who shared their perspective on the marketplace and how this ever-growing demand on the industry affects their livelihood. Here are two excerpts from the articles you’ll find further in the magazine:
“As dairy farmers, we know we make the same from less or that we make more from the same, but we don’t always think about it in a sustainability metric.” —Paul Lippert, Wisconsin
“It’s all full circle for us. All that we’re doing on the land to improve digestibility with forages leads to higher production, and higher production by this way reduces the carbon footprint.” —Clement Gervais, Vermont
Please remember, as the industry strives to meet the demands of global climate commitments and more questions are answered about the carbon market space, your work is not going unnoticed, especially from those 5-year-old boys in the backseat of their mom’s minivan.
