Your Farm, Your Footprint: Revolutionizing Dairy Sustainability

An organization called Professional Dairy Producers just launched an initiative that empowers dairy producers to know and easily understand the environmental footprint of their operations.

The initiative, Your Farm, Your Footprint, can help in various ways. Topping the list, producers gain insight as to what their sustainability score is. Shelly Meyer is the executive director, and explains:

We'll have a customized roadmap. They'll give you ideas of things that you can do to improve, possibly lower that score, just things to think about that you can incorporate into your operation.

Your Farm, Your Footprint is peer-to-peer sharing. JJ Pagel, a Wisconsin dairy producer, said:

All our farms are different, and one neat thing that we learned about our farm is we have a digester on our farm, so we learned how that was different from different things within our peer group. We also learned about how different tillage practices between cover crops and no-till and minimum-till and just conventional-till and how that affected all of our scores.

 

This farmer-led initiative, Your Farm, Your Footprint, allows producers to measure carbon and methane emissions while retaining control of their data. Janet Clark, also a dairy producer from Wisconsin, offers her thoughts:

I'd advise dairy farmers to take the time and learn about Your Farm, Your Footprint and how it can help you prepare for the future of your own farm.