2021 Progress Report
2021 was full of progress for Farmers for Sustainable Food. FSF continues to help grow a network of farmer-led watershed conservation groups. Along with three partners, FSF gained national recognition receiving an Outstanding Supply Chain Collaboration Award for a sustainability project they piloted in southwestern Wisconsin.
A Framework for Farm-Level Sustainability Projects
Farmers for Sustainable Food and a diverse group of public and private partners supported the development of a first-of-its-kind framework for sustainability projects that helps farmers determine what conservation practices are most effective for their individual farms and document the environmental and financial effects.
Dairy Genetic Predictions: More Than Profitability
A collaborative project between FSF, Zoetis, and 8 aligned farms was executed to show how focusing on genetic improvement through CLARIFIDE® Plus correlates to not only lifetime profitability but reductions in methane intensity, antibiotic usage and feed needed for maintenance on the farm. This project focused on animals that were born in 2015 and genomically tested as heifers. Study results showed that this group of farms averaged $1,552 lifetime profit per cow, 43% reduction in antibiotic usage, 23% reduction in the number of replacement heifers needed and 15.8 metric tons of methane reduced per 1,000 cow herd. These outcomes were achieved by focusing on utilizing the Dairy Wellness Profit Index ® (DWP$) from CLARIFIDE Plus.
Farm-Level Sustainability Project – crave brothers
Supported by Farmers for Sustainable Food, Crave Brothers Farm LLC analyzed three years of crop data (2019-2021) to assess if their current farming practices are having a positive impact on local stream water quality. The study showed that through the various conservation practices adopted by Crave Brothers, they have on-farm sustainability scores that are improving year-over-year and, in many cases, are better than national indicators. For example, greenhouse gas emissions are 12% lower that than national indicator scores for their production of corn silage. By using cover crops and no-till in project fields in the watershed, the farm has reduced sediment loading from the sub-watershed that they farm in by 5% to Crawfish River. View more outcomes in this one-page overview.
LASA Sustainability Project
Farmers for Sustainable Food, the Lafayette Ag Stewardship Alliance, and key stakeholders in the dairy supply chain partnered to pilot a framework for farmer-led sustainability projects. The framework created by these groups provides a pathway for establishing sustainability projects that deliver real results and make a measurable difference.
PPF Sustainability Project
Peninsula Pride Farms partnered with Farmers for Sustainable Food to use the Framework for Farm-Level Sustainability Projects. PPF is interested in how their farmer members are impacting local water resources and are identifying how current and future in-field best management practices are influencing changes to local water resources.
Producer-Led Group Roadmap: A guide to farmers and partners in conservation
Farmers for Sustainable Food, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, and The Nature Conservancy collaborated to create a guide for farmers looking to form a conservation group.
The Dairy Stream Podcast
The Dairy Stream podcast talks with Rachel Rushmann, Producer-led Program manager at Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection; Steve Richter, director of agriculture strategies at The Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin; and Lauren Brey, director of strategic partnerships and sustainability for Farmers for Sustainable Food, who together created the Producer-led Group Roadmap: Finding Success in Farmer-Led Watershed Organizations.
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About how you can support a project
Farmers for Sustainable Foods continues to help grow a network of farmer-led watershed conservation groups—closely supporting seven of them in Wisconsin. They are expanding innovative farming practices that are proving, by science and data, to be reducing the risk to the environment. Want to learn more? You can request more information below.