Friday, March 29, 2024

Project finds solutions to lower dairy footprint

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DairyNZ’s Greenhouse Gas Partnership Farms research project has shown ways farmers can increase their efficiency and reduce their environmental footprint, but it is not without its challenges.
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The project, which started in 2018 worked with farmers to identify and model how their farms might reduce both nitrogen loss and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

It established 12 partnership farms across New Zealand, and initially modelled 44 different farm systems options. The farms were based in Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Southland, Canterbury and Manawatu.

Case studies on six of the farms were developed to demonstrate potential options for farmers to reduce emissions and nitrogen loss, while exploring the effect on profitability. These six farms were selected to ensure representative and robust farm system data and modelling.

For each of the case study farms, changes to the system have been modelled in Overseer and Farmax to estimate the reduction in N leached, changes in GHG and profit.

The remaining six farms had the case studies abandoned because of changing circumstances on the farm, such as changes in ownership.

DairyNZ strategy and investment leader Dr Bruce Thorrold says the research reinforced its position on the Climate Change Commission’s report that its targets are achievable but challenging.

“While every individual farm will find its own set of solutions to reducing emissions and nitrate leaching, all farms are operating under the same core scientific principles,” Thorrold said.

“If you want to produce less methane, you have to produce less feed. If you want to lower your N outputs, then starting at your N surplus is a good place to start.”

All of the options for methane reduction modelled on the case studies came back to those core principles, Thorrold said.

“While every farm will find a unique solution, let’s not confuse the issue by suggesting this is really complex and difficult. The principles are really clear.”

All of the farms in the case studies were able to make some gains. These included easy fixes, such as inefficiencies in the farm system.

Thorrold says for other farmers who were already operating highly efficient systems, they could make gains by reducing their inputs, but that came at a cost to profitability.

“It is more challenging for farms that are already efficient. For them, it’s about where even the smallest gains can be made. Small improvements on individual farms add up at national level,” he said.

He says the research highlighted the need for more investment in research and extension work, while at the same time protecting the dairy industry’s viability if it was to meet some of the commission’s more challenging targets.

For farmers, the message was they had to face this challenge.

“Here are some of your peers and here’s the work they have done to try and understand their system and find ways forward. It’s time for us all to do the same thing,” he said.

He says the study also confirmed many of DairyNZ’s long-held positions around one size not fitting every solution, the importance of good data and understanding the starting position and accurate modelling.

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