Story submitted by Anne Moore, sustainability communications manager for Farmers For Sustainable Food.
Three years of results from an eye-opening sustainability project in southwestern Wisconsin show that farmers who incorporate environmental practices that improve water quality and conserve soil can also benefit financially.
Lafayette Ag Stewardship Alliance (LASA), a farmer-led watershed conservation group, released the latest results from an ongoing study of its nationally recognized sustainability project. Data was collected and analyzed from 15 farmers for the 2019-2021 crop years to demonstrate the impact of conservation on soil and water quality. Four of the farms also participated in an assessment of how the practices affect financials.
The bottom line: Implementing conservation practices has maintained and, in some cases, increased yields, and has generated positive gross returns per acre all while increasing environmental quality.
“Farmers have been working to improve soil health and water quality for many years, but now they are able to see how it is affecting the bottom line for their businesses,” Lauren Brey, managing director of Farmers for Sustainable Food, said.
Brey’s group, a nonprofit organization of food system stakeholders, helped shepherd the project. The project has three key purposes: assess the impact of farming practices on soil and water quality; demonstrate the financial effects of conservation practices; and increase the use of sustainability measurement tools by farmers to inform land and water management decisions.
Jay Stauffacher, co-owner of Highway Dairy Farms in Darlington, is one of the participants in the project, both in the environmental assessment and financial component. The 55-year-old family farm has 1,100 cows.
“What started as a way to reduce erosion after corn silage has led into improving soil health, reducing our farm’s carbon footprint and opening up new techniques of achieving crop yields in a more environmentally friendly way,” Stauffacher said. “Also, putting the financial data into this project has shown us which practices have reduced our costs in achieving the same yields, if not better, and other practices that would make financial sense that we currently do not use.”
The top six conservation practices farmers in the project are using are grassed waterways, contouring, cover crops, reduced tillage, strip cropping and no-tilling. The study’s findings are detailed in a 12-page report.
In addition to Farmers for Sustainable Food, LASA has partnered with many others to develop and implement the project. Grande Cheese Company, The Nature Conservancy and Southwest Wisconsin Technical College are among supporters. The broad collaboration drew a national sustainability award in 2021 from the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy.
“Having diverse partners support this project is truly what has made it successful and unique,” Brey said.
The technical college provides the financial analysis. Deb Ihm, director of agriculture at the college and a lead analyst for the project, pointed to two other key discoveries in addition to the positive yields and returns.
“Market price has a greater impact on financial sustainability than environmental practices,” Ihm said. Farmers need to know their cost of production per acre and identify ways to improve environmental quality, feed quality and price management.”
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