As livestock and poultry production has intensified it is no surprise that regulations have become a more prominent part of the business. This module introduces the Clean Water Act (CWA) and it application to animal agriculture. This material was developed for use in beginning farmer and extension programs, high school classrooms, and for self-study or professional continuing education.
Agriculture Professionals and Farmers
Check out this self-study module “Playing By the Rules“. This module is estimated to take 60 minutes and offers a certificate upon successful completion.
Teachers, Extension, Consultants
Educators are welcome to use the following materials in their classrooms and educational programs. More modules…
Instruction Guide – includes lesson plan, links to additional information, connections to national agriculture education standards (AFNR Career Content Cluster Standards), application to Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) projects, sample quiz/review questions, and enrichment activities.
Reviewers: Paul Hay, University of Nebraska, Lyle Holmgren, Utah State University, Jill Heemstra, University of Nebraska, Elizabeth Burns Thompson, Drake University (law student), Mary Catherine Barganier, NYFEA, Shannon Arnold, Montana State.
There are several strategies of reducing, or mitigating carbon and other GHG emissions.
The first and most basic of which is conservation – if we don’t use the energy in the first place, we don’t need to be concerned with what emissions it was responsible for. Agricultural energy audits are helpful to see the areas capable of the biggest improvements.
Second are emission offsets; an offset is a greenhouse gas reduction made by a non-regulated entity, which is purchased by a regulated entity.
The third strategy of reducing GHG emissions is a regulation imposed to restrict the quantity of emissions on certain parties; this regulation can be in the form of a tax or cap and trade program. Markets exist to trade both voluntary- and mandatory-based compliance credits.
Aside from voluntary and compliance-based markets, other market opportunities exist to give value to reduced emissions, including utility purchase of green energy (both electricity and gas). The Cow Power Program in Vermont is a good example of this process in the U.S. However, with all market options available to trade emission credits, there are costs and potential risks involved that are important to be educated about.
An opportunity exists for animal agriculture to benefit from GHG cap and trade programs, since regulated entities will be looking for carbon offset credits to purchase, and this will drive up the value of the offsets. Credits could be more valuable in the future with legislation to regulate certain sectors – they will look to agriculture as one of the voluntary sources from which to be able to offset those emissions.
Educator Materials
If you would like to use the video, slides, or factsheet for educational programs, please visit the curriculum page for download links for this and other climate change topics.
Examples of Voluntary and Compliance Markets
No endorsement is intended by listing here. These are listed purely to provide examples of different types of markets.
This page was developed as part of a project “Animal Agriculture and Climate Change” an extension facilitation project to increase capacity for ag professionals. It was funded by USDA-NIFA under award # 2011-67003-30206.
Why Develop a Feed Management Certification Program?
To develop a program to train ARPAS-certified (American Registry of Professional Animal Scientists) dairy and beef nutritionists on how to prepare and evaluate Feed Management plans as it relates to the NRCS Feed Management (592) practice in Pennsylvania. The objective is to compare how formulated diets match to the consumed diets. Phosphorus is monitored through manure testing and nitrogen by milk urea nitrogen and calculating milk nitrogen efficiency. Dry matter intake efficiency is also monitored as this can affect the total manure volume excreted.
What Did We Do?
In 2007, Mid-Atlantic Water Program (MAWP) scientists applied the national feed management program to meet the needs of dairy consultants to implement feed management in the Chesapeake Basin. This program certifies consultants in precision feed management, a practice that reduces nutrient loads in animal wastes by minimizing the phosphorus and nitrogen content in the feed.
With the recent release of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Total Maximum Daily Load for the Chesapeake Bay, the agricultural community is looking for the best practices to control nutrient pollution while minimizing impacts to profit. Over the years, the work of this project team has established precision feed management as both an economically and environmentally viable best management practice. As such, state watershed implementation plans include precision feed management as a method to meet load allocations.
Pennsylvania currently has twenty-four NRCS qualified nutritionists to write feed management plans. In 2011, fifty-one operations received EQIP or CBWI funding through USDA-NRCS for feed management, with the majority consisting of dairy farms. An additional 10 farms entered into contracts with NRCS in 2012. Farms are currently in the process of being assessed on how well they implemented recommendations from the first year of quarterly reports and are working through their second year of implementation.
Additional efforts have been implemented to educate consultants about the regulations and issues affecting dairy producers. Currently, the Pennsylvania team is working with producers to monitor income over feed costs and to develop cash flow plans, which provides the opportunity to implement precision feeding practices while monitoring the economic benefits to the herd. A study of six component fed dairy herds in Pennsylvania is also being completed to evaluate the effects of the feed, forage, and manure sampling protocols along with feeding order on fecal phosphorus levels and to update current sampling recommendations.
Funding from the MAWP was critical to providing these trainings and projects and establishing precision feed management as a best management practice that farmers can realistically utilize. The infrastructure is in place to address the demand for more feed management plans and the MAWP will continue to meet the educational needs of this audience.
What Have We Learned?
There are a lot of opportunities on farms to improve feed management and nutrient balance. Challenges have been observed pertaining to nutrient reduction strategies that could impact overall nutrient balances in dairy and beef rations. Many of these challenges are greatly influenced by the volatility in today’s commodity pricing. Producers need to become more engaged in what they are feeding and how it affects their profitability. It has been observed that inorganic phosphorus is still being used in grain mixtures when rations contain high phosphorus forages or inclusion of byproduct feeds. We have also observed some challenges in obtaining test analyses for complete grain and mineral mixes on a regular basis. More education is needed for both industry professionals as well as producers.
Future Plans
As the feed management program in Pennsylvania progresses, pounds of phosphorus excreted can be tracked to monitor the effects of reducing phosphorus in dairy and beef rations. This can be used to evaluate its effect on water quality and potential phosphorus accumulations in the soil when manure is applied to crops at nitrogen-based rates. Crop rotations, inclusion of alternative forages and whole farm nutrient balance will be included in future trainings and feed management plans. The Penn State Extension Dairy team is also working on the development of a Feed Management mobile app for producers and nutritionist to be able to track and monitor their progress on nutrient reductions in their rations.
The authors are solely responsible for the content of these proceedings. The technical information does not necessarily reflect the official position of the sponsoring agencies or institutions represented by planning committee members, and inclusion and distribution herein does not constitute an endorsement of views expressed by the same. Printed materials included herein are not refereed publications. Citations should appear as follows. EXAMPLE: Authors. 2013. Title of presentation. Waste to Worth: Spreading Science and Solutions. Denver, CO. April 1-5, 2013. URL of this page. Accessed on: today’s date.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
