When the Professional Nutrient Applicators Association of Wisconsin met earlier this year, the group invited four dairy producers to explain what they expect of the nutrient applicators they hire to handle an important task for their dairy operations.

Through remarkable technologies such as anaerobic digestion, agriculture is working to develop waste management options that are sustainable and ecologically sound. Even those dairy producers who operate on smaller scales should be aware that adopting cleaner practices starts with dirtying the hands.

While the process of anaerobically digesting organic wastes has long been present in the U.S., its effective use is often not realized since the basics of its operation is not well understood.

As the snow begins to melt, frost leaves the ground and rain showers fall, farmers are busy applying manure and other nutrients to their fields in advance of spring planting.

The Discovery Farms Program continues to churn out on-farm research results in relation to the actual performance of environmental best management practices. Since 2002, this University of Wisconsin program has set up monitoring stations at surface, tile and stream sites and, in total, has collected 160 site years of information.

Just five years shy of their family dairy’s 100-year anniversary, dairymen brothers Bruce and Brad Scott of San Jacinto, California, faced a most terrible “what if” situation. State water quality regulators informed the Scotts that within five years they could no longer apply any manure – in liquid or solid form – to their adjacent farm ground.

Rising conspicuously smack-dab in the middle of Oregon’s wine country near Dayton are two large, blue manure-slurry holding tanks with expandable tops – methane digesters – erected in 2012 at Forest Glen Jerseys. It’s a $2.4 million facility.

Pure bacterial cultures fed a synthetic sugar substrate made from processed corn can make polyhydroxyalkanoate, or PHA, a biodegradable plastic.

Raise your hand if you operate a dairy farm and you are the only person making decisions regarding the business. My guess is that not too many hands went up.