Farmers need to lead the charge

The most effective climate change legislation would be driven by those within agriculture.

by Abby Bauer, Managing Editor

s the new administration settles into the White House, it’s clear that climate and the environment are high on their list of priorities. While not everyone agrees on the seriousness of climate change, the cause, or its impact on the future, it is a concern of many that is not going to just go away. In fact, many conversations have shifted from the verbiage of climate change to climate crisis, and legislation that affects agricultural producers will inevitably become a reality.

Just two weeks after the election took place, Jamie Powers, the senior manager for agricultural engagements with the nonprofit program Rural Investment to Protect our Environment (RIPE), moderated a panel discussion during the Sustainable Agriculture Summit. The conversation focused on what would make climate legislation successful.

Voluntary and viable

“Regardless of the election results, many agricultural producers sense that climate legislation is headed their way,” Powers said. “What role should agriculture play in climate solutions?”

The first comments from the panel came from Eunice Biel, who owns a dairy and crop farm with her husband, her son, and his family in southeastern Minnesota. Biel said they have used many conservation practices over the years.

“Farmers and ranchers understand the importance of conserving natural resources and mitigating climate change. Their livelihoods depend on it,” she said.

However, she indicated that these practices often require significant time, money, and expertise. “That’s why programs that provide financial and technical assistance for conservation efforts are so vital, and so popular,” she said in reference to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) within USDA.

Marty Matlock, a professor of ecological engineering at the University of Arkansas, also gave a nod to USDA’s conservation programs.

“We have 2.3 billion acres of land in the contiguous U.S. Of that, over 900 million acres are in private farm ownership. If we are going to achieve any sort of continent-scale improvement in conservation, we are going to have to engage private landowners in a way that is viable,” he stated. “That’s why USDA’s implementation of compliance through voluntary engagement is so powerful, and it has been working.”

He used soil erosion as an example. “Soil erosion has been declining dramatically for the last 40 years in row-crop areas. We are not done yet; we still have too much erosion. Every farm knows erosion is bad,” he said. “But reducing it is a possibility when we start engaging conservation programs and expanding our partnerships.”

Matlock has been working with ag communities around the nation for 20 years to identify opportunities for improving land conservation, production efficiency, and farm profitability. “You have to have all of those things if you are going to have a sustainable agricultural enterprise,” he said.

He emphasized farmers’ important role in protecting our natural resources and compensating them for that work.

“We need to pay our farmers for what they give us,” he said. “It’s a simple, simple principle.”

It became political

Despite the growing need for climate change legislation, establishing forward progress has been very difficult for lawmakers. Clare Sierawski, who worked for a number of years as a legislative aide on a variety of governmental efforts in climate change and agricultural policy, shared her insight on this topic.

“There are a number of reasons why previous attempts to pass climate legislation have failed,” she said. “The first and biggest is that climate change has become a truly divisive, partisan issue.” She said some elected officials won’t even bring the topic up in conversation because they think their constituents will oppose it.

“In a country as deeply divided as ours is between Republicans and Democrats, you need people from both parties to push for legislation or nothing is going to

happen,” she shared.”

She believes the second barrier to climate legislation has to do with the cost.

“We’ve all been convinced that climate legislation is going to come at a big cost,” she explained. “While transitioning away from fossil fuels will come at a cost in the near term for some, it can also create serious economic opportunities, and the cost of inaction most certainly will outweigh the cost of action.”

To overcome these barriers and move forward, Sierawski said, “We need to change the players and reframe the approach.” She feels it will take a commitment from farmers to get this done.

“We need ag producers to take the reins and make ag climate legislation work for them. We need legislation that is led by middle America. We need legislation that will create real benefits; benefits worth fighting for by farmers and ranchers,” she stated.

“There haven’t been any attempts to date to design climate legislation that puts the agriculture community front and center. That’s the missing piece,” she emphasized.

Farmers at the helm

Nebraska crop farmer Brandon Hunnicutt agreed with Sierawski’s comments. He farms with his family at Hunnicutt Farms where they grow corn, soybeans, and popcorn, using various methods and technology to reduce inputs and protect soil, water, and air quality.

“We need to lead this charge. It’s an opportunity that comes around maybe once in a generation,” he shared. “All the stars have aligned at this moment in time for us to push for the legislation to not only help farmers but help the climate crisis we are in.”

Hunnicutt said farmers have opportunities for government payments, but those that center on climate change have been missed. He feels there is a need to compensate farmers who are already using climate-friendly practices along with incentivizing more farms to do so in the future.

The first challenge for farmers to enact change, Sierawski said, is collaboration. “You need the ag community to agree that it’s going to fight for it,” she said.

Farmers across the country are in different situations and face their own unique challenges. However, future policies could impact all farmers, and climate legislation designed with farmer input would be better than legislation that has little ag input at all. Hunnicutt encouraged his fellow farmers to step up to the plate.

“As farmers, we need to take the lead. We need to be the ones who are driving this conversation. It’s coming,” Hunnicutt said. “It’s either coming at us, or we are going to drive the train and make sure we get the legislation we want and need.” ■

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Dairy Farmers of Washington

A Washington dairy turns manure into compost and usable water with the help of some little underground creatures.

by Abby Bauer, Managing Editor

When looking for a way to reduce the amount of wastewater being trucked from his central Washington dairy, Austin Allred came upon a fairly simple solution: a worm-powered water treatment system.

Growing up on his family’s potato farm near Royal City, Wash., Allred worked on a local dairy during high school. In 2009, Allred and his dad, Jerry, partnered with the owners of that farm, Royal Dairy, and then purchased the farm from them in 2016. Today, Royal Dairy is home to 6,000 milking cows, a herd of mostly Jerseys. Freestall barns house about 60% of the herd, while the rest of the milking cows, dry cows, and heifers are kept on open lots.

The farm was designed so that all of the flush water from the freestall barns and vacuumed manure from the drylots ended up in a large storage basin, which would flow into an even larger settling lagoon. Allred said a pipeline system was in place for irrigation, but the water from the lagoon was too dirty to use effectively, causing the sprinklers to plug up often. They also didn’t have enough acres available to use all of the water through irrigation.

That meant the dairy was trucking millions of gallons of wastewater or “green water” out of the lagoon each year. Depending on nutrient test results, it would take an average of 4,000 acres to dispose of properly, and most of those acres were a distance from the dairy, Allred said.

Also, most of the water used to flush the freestall barns came out of the lagoon as well. Flushing with this dirty water had a negative impact on herd health and milk quality. Just a year after he purchased the dairy, Allred identified the need to do something different.

A huge liability

“Any dairy farmer that trucks green water can relate to where I was at,” he said in a presentation during the virtual Sustainable Agriculture Summit. “Having multiple trucks hauling water 5 or 6 months a year was not fun, and the liability connected to that is huge.”

Allred considered manure storage to be the biggest liability on the dairy, and that was a major consideration as he looked for a solution to meet his nutrient management needs.

He found the answer to his problem while attending World Ag Expo in Tulare, Calif. It was there where he first talked with BioFiltro, a wastewater filtration company, about their Biodynamic Aerobic (BIDA) System, which uses worms within a passive aerobic system to clean wastewater.

With some initial skepticism, he started out by installing a pilot project in 2017 that handled just 10,000 gallons of wastewater daily. Allred said he played around with that biofilter for a year and then installed a much larger system that could utilize more of the dairy’s water per day. The exception was the flush water, which was still coming out of their green water storage. Happy with the results, in 2020 he finalized the system, which can now handle 750,000 gallons of green water per day, most of which is recycled and reused multiple times.

Where the worms live

Today, the dairy’s manure first goes through solid separation. The separated solids are composted and then land applied or used as bedding.

The green water is destined for the BIDA System, which is located on a 10-acre footprint next to the farm’s manure

Austin Allred, who operates a 6,000 cow dairy in central Washington, recycles water using an aerobic filtration system.

lagoons. It travels through a pipeline by gravity or with pump assistance when needed.

The wastewater is irrigated across the top of the concrete containment basins that are 5 feet deep. Each basin has drainage cells along the floor, a 1.5-foot layer of crushed rock, and a layer of wood chips on top. It is within this wood chip layer that the dirty work takes place, and worms are key to getting the job done.

As the worms burrow through the shavings, they make channels that help evenly distribute nutrients and water throughout the system. Their guts are rich in the microbes needed to remove the contaminants in the water they digest. Each worm excretes 10 pounds of castings each year, which maintains the microbial activity of the system.

The waste, or vermicastings, are also a highly beneficial soil amendment that is sought after as a fertilizer. Every year and a half, the shavings layer and vermicastings from Royal Dairy’s system are removed and sold to nurseries. An estimated 4.5 cubic yards of castings are generated per cow per year.

It takes just four hours from when the water enters the system for it to seep through the worms and microbe media and then head out of the containment basins through exit pipes as an irrigatable tea water that can also be used to flush the barns. The ability to clean the water so quickly also reduces odors that develop when manure and wastewater sit untreated in a lagoon.

Allred said the system runs effectively all year long, with just a few changes needed when it is really cold out to assure the water pipes don’t freeze.

As for the worms, Allred said they are very self-sufficient. They simply need to be fed with the green water. Each worm has a lifespan of about six years, and Allred noted that the worms reproduce very fast, so each worm may add 400 to 600 worms to the workforce each year. The only time new worms need to be added is when the shavings and vermicompost layer is removed and replaced.

Successful results

Royal Dairy is one of just a handful of farms currently using this biofilter system. Since it began operating, Allred has achieved an 89% lifetime removal average of total suspended solids, total nitrogen, total volatile solids, and total phosphorus. Further value may come in the form of selling carbon credits, which the farm recently became verified to do.

Allred has deemed two main benefits of using the BIDA system. The first is that they are able to flush their barns with the cleaner tea water, not green water like they used to. “This has been a big win for health of the animals and it improved our somatic cell count,” Allred said.

The second is that the dairy does not have to use trucks to haul away nearly as much green water. “That has been a huge victory,” said Allred.

The biofilter is also successful at removing 90% of the methane produced by manure. An uncovered lagoon can create 7 to 9 tons of methane per cow per year; through vermifiltration, the amount of methane per cow can be brought down to just 1 ton annually.

“I think as a farmer, good environmental stewardship is innately important to all of us,” said Allred. “We do the best we can, make improvements, and make sure we can always graduate to the next level of sustainability.”

For Royal Dairy, worms were the secret ingredient to turn their green water into cleaner water that can be used in several ways. With less methane being released and fewer trucks on the road, the environmental benefits go beyond the dairy’s borders, too. ■

Dairy Farmers of Washington

WHEN ARE POULTRY LITTER NUTRIENTS AVAILABLE?

DON’T LET PHOSPHORUS LEVELS BUILD UP

Poultry litter can serve as a significant source of crop nutrients for states near large poultry producing areas. Peter Tomlinson and Dorivar Ruiz Diaz of Kansas State Research and Extension shared details about litter content and how it can be used in a K-State Agronomy eUpdate newsletter.

Their analysis of 213 poultry manure samples showed the variation that exists in poultry litter. While the average pounds of nitrogen (N) per ton of litter was 56, there was a range of 12 to 92 pounds per ton. The spread was even greater for phosphorus (P), which averaged 53 pounds per ton but varied from 7 to 165 pounds. Potassium (K) samples fell between 6 and 72 pounds per ton, with 46 pounds as the average.

As for crop availability, the authors explained that N is primarily in the organic form in poultry litter, up to 80%. Organic N needs to mineralize before becoming available to crops. Studies have shown that approximately 45% to 55% of the total N becomes available to the plant the first year of application. Reduction of N availability may occur when the litter is aged or has gone through some level of composting. Ammonium volatilization is usually higher on warm, windy days, but incorporation can reduce this loss and potential runoff losses.

On the flip side, a large fraction of manure P is available immediately after application, between 50% and 100%. Similarly, nearly 100% of K is available with proper application.

Moisture content and nutrient concentration can be highly variable, depending on production conditions, storage, and handling methods. The authors reminded farmers that laboratory analysis is the best way to determine the level of nutrients in the litter.

Litter analysis (lb./ton)

180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

92

56 165 ■ Average ■ High ■ Low

72

53 46

12 7 6

N P2O5 K2O

Unlike commercial fertilizers that can be mixed to achieve a desired nutrient content, manure comes with fixed nutrient ratios. These ratios often don’t align perfectly with the needs of field, and this can lead to over or under application of certain nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorus.

In a University of Minnesota Extension Crop News article, extension educator Chryseis Modderman posed the question, “Should you apply manure based on nitrogen needs or phosphorus needs?” The answer, she wrote, depends on the soil and the manure test results.

If a field is already high in phosphorus, a farmer may decide to apply manure on a phosphorus-based rate to avoid further build up. If phosphorus levels are low, a nitrogen-based rate would work well as long as it won’t elevate phosphorus levels too high.

Even though phosphorus is less mobile than nitrogen, Modderman explained there is still a risk of loss through runoff and erosion. To avoid phosphorus build up, she shared two strategies. One is to apply the nutrient at a phosphorus-based rate. An alternative method is to apply manure at the nitrogen-based rate, but then not apply any more manure to that field until the excess phosphorus has been utilized.

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