ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP

The Environmental Stewardship Program has experienced steady growth year-over-year, with more than 1,390 evaluations completed on 1,205 dairy farms nationwide since 2017. FARM stakeholder groups and the advisory committee regularly reviews and incorporates new science to ensure robust and reliable results. They also evaluate and meet expanding interests and needs of FARM participants. Version 1 closed in 2019 and the launch of Version 2 took place in February 2020. Version 2 contains new data inputs, updated crop emissions factors and a more detailed breakdown of results.

What is changing in Version 2?

1. New data inputs

ƒ Solid-liquid separation will be an option for manure management strategies.

ƒ Solar and wind energy generated on the farm will be asked about.

ƒ The evaluation is based on data from the preceding 12-month period. Previously, data was specific to the date of the evaluation.

ƒ Nutrient management plan questions will capture information for the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy’s stewardship commitment metric, “Do you implement and maintain a written nutrient management plan?” These questions are unrelated to FARM’s environmental stewardship greenhouse gas (GHG) model.

2. New crop emissions factors

ƒ Program participants won’t see this change, but the model algorithms are updated using crop emissions factors from 2013-2017 production data. The previous model used 20042008 data from the original Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

3. More detailed results

ƒ Co-ops and processors will now be able to see their GHG results broken down by gas type, which is important for FARM participants looking to better respond to customer questionnaires.