Recently Larry Chase, Professor Emeritus of Cornell University, spoke at the 2021 Cornell Nutrition Conference (CNC) about environmental sustainability in the dairy industry, a subject that has been on many minds recently. Chase recently shared his paper and his CNC presentation on the subject with the NEAFA Agronomy Committee.
“All of us know that society is concerned about water and air quality,” said Chase. “I think that it’s important to say that dairymen have tried to be good stewards of the land and take care of their animals. Society doesn’t always recognize that they as an industry have been working at this forever. The dairy industry has done a lot of good things and that means that they’re sort of ahead of the game as (environmental) regulations get more strict. The biggest thing is that they have improved efficiency of feed to milk. There are less nutrients excreted into the manure. They’re taking advantage of improved forage analysis information and knowing how to formulate a ration that is one or two points lower in protein. You get the same high quality milk, but with less nitrogen in the cow, there’s less nitrogen going into manure; the same thing has happened with phosphorus. The industry has been able to reduce the input to the cow without changing milk so there’s less going back into the environment.” According to Chase’s paper, there was a 40.4% increase in the amount of milk per pound per cow per year, while nitrogen in manure dropped 8.1 percent, methane emissions dropped 3.4%, and phosphorus levels dropped 20.1%
An issue the industry faces however, is messaging. “Somehow the industry has to get this to consumer,” said Chase. “The problem is if the industry says it, a lot of consumers will falsely say that it’s biased information. We need to get it to the consumer in a way that they will accept, because the information that we’ve gathered is solid.”
Moving forward, Chase believes the industry needs to focus on whole farm integrated models. “We can look at the cow nutrition portion and come up with good numbers and that’s valuable, but at some point you have to say what about cropping rotations, economics, manure, etc.,” said Chase. “You have to tie the whole farm together instead of looking at one piece. What’s great is that we can make these improvements in decreasing the environmental impact, and at the same time it increases the profitability of the whole farm since you’re increasing production while maximizing your forage. It’s a win win for producers and consumers.”
To read Chase’s paper on the subject, click here. To see his powerpoint from the 2021 CNC, click here.