Food Sustainability

Sponsors

United States Department of Agriculture

University of Wisconsin

People

Karin Veltman (veltmank@umich.edu)

Project summary

Studying carbon and water footprints & best management practices for food production

Assessing and improving the sustainability of dairy production is essential to secure future food production. In the DairyCAP project, we aim to (i) reduce the life cycle environmental impact of milk produced in the Great Lakes region; and (ii) identify opportunities to increase the resiliency of dairy production in current and future climate.

We use process-based models to assess whether the environmental footprint of dairy production in the Great Lakes region can be improved by implementation of Beneficial Management Practices (BMP). We evaluated individual farm-component specific BMPs, that is, 5 dietary manipulations, 3 (150 cow farm) or 4 (1500 cow farm) manure interventions, and 6 field interventions, as well as an integrated whole-farm mitigation strategy based on the best performing individual BMPs.

Our results show that the integrated BMP strategy can substantially reduce the C footprint, reactive N footprint and total P loss of both farms with predicted reductions of approximately 41%, 41% and 46% respectively, while increasing milk production and the net return per cow by approximately 11% and 27%. Thus an integrated set of BMPs can be implemented to reduce GHG emissions and nutrient losses of dairy farms in the Great Lakes region without sacrificing productivity or profit to the farmer in current climate conditions. Our current research focusses on assessing the effectivity of BMPs under future climate conditions and will provide opportunities to increase resilience of dairy production systems.

Publications

1. Veltman K, Jones CD, Gaillard R, Cela S, Chase L, Duval BD, Izaurralde RC, Ketterings QM, Li C, Matlock M, Reddy A, Rotz A, Salas W, Vadas P, Jolliet O. 2017. Comparison of process-based models to quantify nutrient flows and greenhouse gas emissions associated with milk production. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. 237: 31-44

2. Veltman K, Rotz CA, Chase L, Cooper J, Ingraham P, Izaurralde RC, Jones CD, Gaillard R, Larson RA, Ruark M, Salas W, Thoma G, Jolliet O. A quantitative assessment of Beneficial Management Practices to reduce carbon and reactive nitrogen footprints and phosphorus losses of dairy farms in the Great Lakes region. Submitted.

Key words

Dairy, milk, climate change process model