One attraction of grass-based dairying is that the cows are feeding themselves. Instead of the dairy farmer focusing on growing, harvesting and feeding rations, the focus changes to growing and managing pastures and controlling the cows’ utilization of those pastures with the goal to optimize cow nutrition, pasture quality, pasture yield and overall soil health. More time is spent observing and monitoring how the cows interact with the natural environment and less is spent performing chores needed to keep the cows housed and fed.
Another perhaps less heralded aspect of grass-based dairy farming is the array of environmental benefits which come from moving cows to fresh pasture so they can consume their next meal. Instead of operating equipment to sow, plant, grow, harvest, store and ultimately feed that meal to confined cows, the grass-based dairy farmer typically moves some temporary fencing several times per day, and the herd moves onto fresh grass.
Greening through grazing
“Greening” the dairy industry through pasture grazing means having perennial crops in the ground – requiring little tilling, plowing or soil disturbance beyond an occasional renovation or overseeding. Grazing decreases the need to manage manure from confined livestock housing, as the cows are out on pasture often 24 hours per day, except during milking, spreading their manure across the fields, generally in amounts in line with the pasture’s ability to utilize the available nutrients.
These are climate-friendly farming practices, and they are now being promoted by the USDA’s funding program, Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (CSC). Grazing-based dairy farms are already ahead of the curve when implementing many of the practices which have now been incentivized through the CSC.
Phyllis Van Amburgh of Dharma Lea Farm in Sharon Springs, New York, and a consultant to Maple Hill Creamery on their recently funded CSC project proposal, pointed out that many conventional dairies will be switching some cropland to perennial pastures via funded projects through the CSC program, but Maple Hill Creamery’s 100% grass-fed dairy farmers “are already doing that.”
Being ahead of the curve on ecologically sound dairy farming practices has allowed Maple Hill Creamery to take advantage of the CSC funding by crafting proposals that pay for pasture improvements. By helping their grazing dairy farmers to be better graziers, and paying them based on measurable indicators, Van Amburgh believes grass-fed dairy farmers will continue to lead the way by improving soil health, plant nutrition, dairy cow health and productivity, and overall ecological well-being.
Perfecting pasture
Carbon sequestering is the crux of grass-based dairy farming, as a perennial pasture is a carbon sink. Managing that pasture to enhance carbon reserves, which is the building block of life and reflects pasture health through biodiversity, enhanced forage nutrition, a thriving soil microbiome, and ultimately cow health and productivity, is the goal of every grazier.
Pasture scoring parameters are already utilized by Maple Hill Creamery to gauge pasture health. These indicators include: plant litter decomposition and incorporation into the soil; the breakdown and decomposition of manure; reproductive capacity of the grasses, legumes and desirable forbs; population vigor of pasture forages; evidence of wind or water erosion; percentage of bare soil; evidence of soil capping; and presence of microfauna. These scoring indicators can be used to chart improvements season to season, allowing payments from the CSC funding to be made to those farmers showing an improvement in grazing and pasture management strategies.
“We wanted to reward them [the farmers] for things they are already doing,” Van Amburgh says. “For us, climate-smart farming is ecological farming.”
Soil sampling and cow body condition scoring (BCS) are other tools which will be utilized to measure a farm’s progress in grazing management skills. Enhanced pasture and soil biodiversity – including insect populations in the soil and soil mineralization – are things that can be measured and monitored. And these are things that have an impact on the carbon life cycle.
Soil insect profiles, which Maple Hill Creamery will be measuring in conjunction with Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, “layers in another level of biodiversity and ecological health,” Van Amburgh says.
Instead of paying for carbon offsets, grass-fed dairies are actually capturing the carbon themselves, directly in the soil through their management practices, with the amount of sequestered carbon increasing as soil and pasture health increase. The living system that nourishes the cows that produce the milk that pays the bills, also captures the carbon and in doing so, further enhances plant, soil and overall pasture health. With little need for tillage, properly managed pastures utilize the cow to trample forages, deposit fertilizer and spread seeds without equipment or disruptive soil disturbances.
Changing perspective
While cows grazing the fields as a primary method of intake is less labor and time intensive, and allows farmers to forego the need for expensive equipment, it is also a complex art and science that takes trial and error, has a learning curve for cow and farmer, and can be taught.
Grazing requires a change in perspective for those converting from feeding cows to primarily letting cows forage for themselves. Instead of feed pushups, feeding times and balancing rations, it’s about pasture management and ensuring maximal nutrition from grazing to reduce the cost, expense and labor of whatever supplemental feeding the herd requires. Feeding confined cows requires growing a good crop this season. Grazing dairy cows requires growing and improving perennial crops indefinitely.
And continual improvement requires ongoing learning. Sharing experiences and learning together is an important part of Maple Hill Creamery’s philosophy. Grazing dairy farmers sharing their own experiences with one another leads to decreased farmer stress and increased ability to make decisions, Van Amburgh explains. Educational gatherings and sharing of experiences is an important part of their CSC grant as well. Networking with other like-minded farmers, and sharing of data and results of various grazing strategies, “really does make a huge difference in all of the farmers’ lives,” she says.
As the dairy industry seeks means of becoming “sustainable,” grazing-based dairy farmers have already forged a path based on ecological health. It all starts with capturing carbon in the soil and cycling it through the plant, to the cow, into the milk. Carbon released to the air naturally via cow digestion is ultimately hydrolyzed back to carbon dioxide, which is captured through photosynthesis by the lush perennial pastures in what is known as the biogenic carbon cycle.
As per researchers at the University of California – Davis, the biogenic carbon cycle completes itself in about one decade. Burning fossil fuels results in the release of greenhouse gases that won’t complete their atmospheric cycle for millions of years, when they will be redeposited into geological reserves. So cows belching while grazing pasture has never been an issue in climate change, but rather is part of a short-term, natural carbon life cycle.
Grazing dairy farms simply have different ecological footprints than conventional dairies. Grazing, done properly, is ecologically low impact. It also is best done on family-scale farms rather than in large commercial-scale facilities, and it has the potential to create climate-friendly dairy farms that are dairy farmer friendly, too. Sometimes, less really is more. Just ask a grass-based dairy farmer.
