As Utahns, water is top of mind. How do we preserve the Great Salt Lake, while creating nutritious food and economic security for our families? Dairy farmers are at the forefront, working to manage this finite resource and ensure the future of our state.
In Southern Utah, Holt Dairy is one example of how innovation and collaboration demonstrate great promise in stewarding water. Dairyman, Kimball Holt, is motivated to create a viable future for his family and believes that “as a dairy farmer, it’s really important to us that the land is better than when we took over.” After learning of a possible dry future, Kimball and his brothers piloted innovative technology to preserve water and grow feed for their 5,000-cow dairy. Working with state officials and university extension, the Holts have implemented a Low Energy Precision Application (LEPA) system to reduce water usage by about 15% each year, over the past two years. The LEPA system uses less water by minimizing evaporation. In traditional irrigation systems, evaporative water loss occurs through wind, directly off the soil and from water sitting on the plant. By irrigating closer to the ground, below the canopy of the plant, farmers can reduce this evaporative loss and use less water. Coupled with strategic crop rotation, the added benefit is that crop yield also increases. It’s a win-win-win.
When the Holt’s look at the future of their farming operation, sustaining the land they depend upon is paramount. In addition to piloting water-saving technology, the Holt’s are working with state water engineers to develop practices and protocols that could be widely adopted in Utah.
(Dairy West, sponsored) Watering closer to the ground reduces evaporation and water use.
Across Utah, dairy farmers who grow feed for their cows are considering their water use. Most use the irrigation system that best fits their landscape, whether that is flood irrigation or a sprinkler-style irrigation systems. When it comes to water that is used on the dairy, farmers have long been stewards. Water is recycled three to five times on a dairy. It may be used to chill milk, provide water for cows to drink, wash equipment and flush manure before it is captured and used to irrigate crops.
As a collective industry, dairy farmers have committed to improving water use and water quality, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 2% to 0% by 2050. Working together, scientists, policy makers, financial advisors and dairy farmers are piloting inventive technology and practices every day to develop viable, long-term solutions to water conservation and greenhouse gas emissions.
(Dairy West, sponsored) Irrigation is targeted closer to the ground, beneath the crop canopy.
In addition to reducing water use and solving for efficiency gains, dairy farmers are looking at other areas of their farms to see where they can make changes to achieve sustainability goals:
Manure management: At one time, manure was considered a waste product; however, research and economics around manure have evolved over the past decade. The nutrients in manure are a valuable resource, especially with the increased cost and energy investment needed to create synthetic plant fertilizers. Some dairy farmers use their cow manure to create compost that can either be re-applied to their own fields, or in some cases, sold as a soil amendment for residential or commercial use. Other farmers have chosen to partner with energy companies, adding their manure to an anaerobic digester to produce renewable natural gas. While manure does produce methane, evolving research is identifying ways that farmers may be able to handle manure to decrease methane production, or better yet, harness the power of methane as a renewable resource.
Cow Nutrition: As ruminant animals, cows eat foods that humans can’t digest, like corn silage, hay, cotton seed and beet pulp. The combination of foodstuffs is managed by a cow nutritionist who balances the ration based on the carbohydrate, fat, protein, moisture content and needs of the cow. One of the many benefits of cows in our ecosystem is that they serve as recyclers, consuming products that would otherwise go to a landfill. By-products of other agricultural sectors, like tart cherry juice, beet pulp, orange peels and almond hulls can add valuable nutrients to a cow’s diet. When mixed into their total mixed ration (TMR), these products are fermented by bacteria in the cow’s rumen, which produces methane when cows burp. Dairy nutritionists are constantly evaluating changes to the cow’s diet that can maintain milk quality, increase production efficiency and reduce methane. New products like feed additives, starches and seaweed may help reduce these enteric methane emissions.
(Dairy West, sponsored) Watering closer to the ground reduces evaporation and water use.
As consumers, many of us are looking for actions that we can take to reduce our own impact on the environment. We may take shorter showers or water our lawn less in the summer, but it can be tricky to know what steps to take to make an impact. Since we all eat, aiming to choose sustainably produced food can be an obvious target; however, with no single standard of what makes a food sustainable it’s hard to make informed decisions.
While there is still much work to be done to reach the dairy industry’s 2050 goals, dairy farmers commitment to continuous improvement is paving the way. Since 2017, producing a gallon of milk requires 30% less water, 21% less land, and a 19% smaller carbon footprint than it did in 2007. That trend continues, and right here in our state we see that collaboration between farmers and the state government show that small changes can make a big impact.