News

The cow of today may not be the cow you want to milk in the future. As standards change and technology improves, your ideal cow could look very different overtime – and she may not look the same as your neighbor’s.

The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) has issued the industry’s first-ever U.S. Dairy Trade Principles on Environmental Sustainability, a critical and proactive step as the global community rallies around climate change and initiatives begin to impact international trade.

Farming is among the most dangerous occupations in the United States, and dairy farming presents even more hazards than crop farming due to animals, feed and on-farm chemicals that are handled daily.

Knowing your state’s law, along with good common sense, can protect your farm against a nuisance lawsuit.

The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, in partnership with Turkey Hill Dairy, Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative, and nine other partners, was recently awarded $4 million to continue supporting dairy farmers in South Central Pennsylvania with on-the-ground improvements through the Turkey Hill Clean Water Partnership (THCWP). Funding was awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP).

Brightmark, the global waste solutions provider, today broke ground on the Caballero Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) project, which includes the construction of new anaerobic digesters at Caballero Dairy Farms, an 8,800 animal farm in Eloy, Arizona.

Tom Crave says his family’s dairy farm is leading the way in sustainability by operating at 100 percent green power. Since adding a manure digester in 2006, the 2,200-cow farm is producing enough electricity for farm operations, Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese and the roughly 300 homes in the township. 

Mootral, a Swiss-British Agritech firm, is launching the world’s first carbon credits generated from methane emission reductions in cattle, linked to its feed supplement made from garlic extracts – Mootral Ruminant – that it says is proven to lower methane released by cows by up to 38%.

If we want to get serious about climate change, it is critical we address our over-reliance on fossil fuels, which are a primary driver of greenhouse gas emissions. Whether it’s diesel, gasoline, kerosene, propane, or coal, burning these sources of fuel emits carbon into the atmosphere, disrupts the naturally-occurring carbon cycle in our ecosystem, and fundamentally threatens our way of life.

However, recycling the carbon already in the atmosphere prevents the extraction and combustion of fossilized carbon sources. 

There has been much talk about the Biden administration’s goal for rural America to play a leading role in combatting climate change, but farmers are still understandably curious and cautious about what those opportunities might mean. Specifically, how the dairy industry’s good environmental work could provide additional revenue for producers might take a number of paths.