The Farmers for Sustainability Food (FSF) Sustainability Program was launched in 2024 to help Upper Midwest farmers determine what conservation practices are the most effective for their farms and provide resources to better track each farm’s environmental impact. The data-driven sustainability program is a five-year collaboration between FSF and Edge Dairy Farm Cooperative.
In its first year, 53 farmers from Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin – representing 100,193 acres of cropland and 71,686 head of cattle – participated in five projects that analyzed their 2023 crop-year information. The data collected from those participants demonstrated that they reduced on average 0.49 metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent per acre per year, enough to power 6,602 U.S. homes for one year or take 11,467 U.S. passenger vehicles off the road.
Progressive Dairy asked four dairy farmers about their involvement in the program.
Tell us about your farm.
JACOB BREY: My brother Tony Brey and I are fourth-generation farmers and co-owners of Brey Cycle Farm LLC, a dairy farm in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, along with our wives and children. We work alongside a team of dedicated employees. The farm has been in the Brey family since 1904. The farm has grown from 100 milking cows and 500 acres to 1,500 milking cows and 2,000 acres. Crops grown include corn for silage, alfalfa and triticale for silage. In addition to raising our own youngstock, we custom raise heifers for other farms. We also raise Holstein-Angus animals from birth to finish. Through Brey Family Beef, we bring quality meat and our farm story directly to customers through an on-farm store and enhanced presence in the community.
Since buying the farm in 2016, Tony and I have increased our emphasis on conservation. Brey Cycle Farm is a founding member of Peninsula Pride Farms as well as a demonstration farm through the Door-Kewaunee Demonstration Farm Network. Cover crops, no-till, planting into green and low-disturbance manure injection are all strategies used to improve soil health and protect water quality. In 2020, 160 acres of land was converted to pasture for managed grazing of pregnant heifers and beef cattle.
MICHAEL CRINION: Our dairy is a 2,100-head farm with animals housed in a cross-ventilated facility on 54 acres. We work with seven neighbors who grow our corn silage, alfalfa and winter rye.
HEIDI FISCHER: Our farm was started in 1972 by my father-in-law and mother-in-law with eight cows. Growth has been a constant and we are currently milking 965 cows. We went from a tiestall barn to a retro-fitted double-eight parlor to the double-20 parlor we installed in 2015. Our cows maintain a rolling herd average of 31,702 pounds of milk, a 4.6% butterfat and a 3.3% protein, all while averaging a somatic cell count (SCC) below 100,000 each month. The facilities have been updated to match the growth of our herd, with a focus on efficiency. We added a tunnel-ventilated barn to complement the existing naturally-ventilated barn that now both house milking cows. A heifer facility was constructed in 2012 and expanded in 2015 in preparation for the milking herd growth in 2016. A calf barn was constructed in 2017, doubling the size of the current one. And a youngstock heifer facility was built in 2018. Jon, my husband, started farming with his parents after high school and I joined the farm in 2014 to be more available for our two daughters and son. We farm about 2,800 acres, with 580 acres of corn silage, 700 acres of high-moisture corn, 400 acres of oleic soybeans, 1,000 acres of alfalfa and 140 acres of a grass blend.
JAKE PEISSIG: JTP Dairy is a 500-cow robotic dairy located in Dorchester, Wisconsin. It is owned by my wife, Tolea, and me. We have 2.5 full-time employees and crop about 1,000 acres consisting mostly of a grass-alfalfa-clover blend, corn for silage and grain, and some soybeans. All crops are used for on-farm feed for our dairy cows.
What were your goals in enrolling in the FSF Food Sustainability Program?
BREY: To better understand what impact conservation practices we implement have on environmental metrics, as well as what kind of scores we would see from the animal side of our farm.
CRINION: To first benchmark where we are and then look at ways to improve.
FISCHER: Our goal of enrolling in the FSF program was to get an analysis of the current farm practices to see where we are efficient and to see where we could improve. We also thought this could be a tool to use when meeting with our local township, the various sportsmen and natural resource clubs in our areas, and with current and potential landowners we rent from. We have always believed that our farming practices helped restore or improve soil health, reduce erosion and support the biological environment for worms and other organisms that help break down organic material, and the reports we received would help explain what our practices are and why they are beneficial. This is a great tool to demonstrate that we are being progressive and sustainable.
PEISSIG: I was hoping to gain a better understanding of our efficiencies as a robot dairy compared to other types of facilities in the industry. I was also looking for a beginning point or a benchmark of sorts to improve upon things as our farm grows and evolves.
What did the data reveal about your farm’s sustainability progress?
BREY: We were excited to see our scores and felt that they give us confirmation that the practices we are implementing are beneficial to the environment as well as our farm as a business. We will continue our emphasis on conservation practices in the fields as well as new technologies in the barn to produce a high-quality product while keeping our cows and our environment healthy. Because of our interest in cattle genetics, we also place an emphasis on certain health and environmental traits when selecting sires and making mating decisions. While the impact of genetics isn’t necessarily measured through this program, it’s something we think is important and has a lot of potential. Traits include Dairy Wellness Profit $, Productive Life and Feed Saved.
CRINION: We (our neighbors and the dairy) were doing better than we thought. We are going to include more cover crops.
FISCHER: It told us we were more efficient than we thought, and it gave us credit for applying manure to our alfalfa feeds that have been interseeded with a grass blend (2-year-and-older alfalfa feeds). We use sand bedding in the milk cow barns and we will be installing a sand separator this summer. Applying the manure with sand from our first stage of our lagoon adds little to no nutrient value to the soil. We have a three-stage manure lagoon that allows about 85% to 90% of the sand to settle out in the first stage. It settles again in the second before reaching the third stage, which is pure liquid. Continually handling the manure and sand from stage one is not efficient.
PEISSIG: We learned that the carbon intensity of our dairy fell below the industry average. However, many improvements can be made in the areas of cover crops and soil protection. Our soils are not the most highly productive in the state, so our reduced yields because of that may have overall hindered our scores.
How was involvement in the sustainability program an added incentive to your farm business?
BREY: The incentive payment was an added bonus to the information we received that we can use to effectively implement and track changes that will make a larger economic impact on our farm in the long run. The support to collect the data, analyze it and the one-on-one review with an expert who understands the data and metrics was also helpful.
CRINION: It encourages more conversations between the dairy personnel and our growers, which helps make everyone’s operation more resilient. In the long term, I hope it also leads to another revenue source for our operations.
FISCHER: The incentive was nice for the time it took to complete the application. It allowed us to invest in some perks for our employees; we plan on purchasing lockers for the locker rooms and do a few machinery maintenance updates.
PEISSIG: It's always good to have multiple tools in your toolbox when dealing with the public and consumer perceptions. This is just another leg on the table of things we can improve on as an individual farm and industry to help increase those positive perceptions.
In what ways do you plan to use your participation in the program to market your milk and other business commodities?
BREY: This is yet to be seen, but we believe the program is setting us up for that potential in the future. Because of this, it has supported the development of a close relationship with our processor, which is valuable. We have previously shared environmental outcomes from our cropping practices with our processor through a different project with our local farmer-led watershed group. The FSF Sustainability Program gave us a whole-farm score that we shared with our processor to build on this.
CRINION: We expect to still market our milk to our milk processor and market our sustainability attributes to end users within our supply chain.
FISCHER: We met with our milk plant and have shared our results. They were appreciative of the information. We indicated that if they ever need a farm to share their story, we would be happy to do so. We both discussed the value of these reports, but figuring out a marketing plan and a way to educate consumers on it has yet to be developed. We both believe that is the end goal; it just may take time.
PEISSIG: At this point, nothing is being offered as an incentive to participate in the program or as an incentive to improve from your current status. Improvement is 100% voluntary, and just wanting to be a better agriculturalist and steward of the environment from the aspect of soil erosion and producing more with less is enough motivation for me to participate in the program.
