Glenda Pereira: 00:15
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an assistant professor of Cooperative Extension and an assistant professor of animal science within the University of Maine, as well as the state dairy specialist. And I have a guest today that I’ve been meaning to bring on the podcast for a long time. So we have with us today Amber Blodgett. Amber is actually a listener of the Farmcast, but Amber is a colleague of mine over in Vermont, and she’s gonna tell us a little bit more about herself.
Glenda Pereira: 00:47
But I’m really excited to have her on because she wears many hats, and one of those is being a farmer, as well as a dairy and forage specialist. Amber, welcome to the podcast.
Amber Blodgett: 01:00
Hey. Thanks. As you mentioned, I’m a really huge fan of this podcast. Your team has done a really outstanding job covering such a huge diversity of topics over the past few years, and I look forward to this download every week. So I was so pleased to be invited on today.
Amber Blodgett: 01:18
As you said, my name is Amber Blodgett. I live in Northwestern Vermont. I’m a dairy research specialist with UVM Extension on the Northwest Crops and Soils team. Our office is located in St. Albans, but we work on farms across the state.
Amber Blodgett: 01:33
I started milking cows when I was 14, and I’ve been involved in the Vermont dairy industry in a variety of capacities since then. But we’re talking decades here. I’m 42 now. So I can say that I have worked in this industry for decades.
Amber Blodgett: 01:51
But I really dialed in my appreciation for dairy cattle and developed a real love and passion for these animals and the science behind milk production at the University of Vermont as an undergrad. I did the student-run dairy program, CREAM, Cooperative for Real Education in Agricultural Management, not really in the early days of the program, but before it became a real pre-vet-oriented program. And I also completed the Advanced Dairy Management program through Miner Institute. So both of those programs through UVM gave me the hands-on and data science aspects of dairy production and some research aspects as well, which really kind of blew my mind on top of the dairy farming that I had already done. And after college, I just kind of continued working on farms across northern and central Vermont for Vermont Dairy Herd Improvement Association and also for the American Breeders Service.
Amber Blodgett: 02:48
I just got to see a whole lot of cows across the state and become friends with and really get to know the farmers who make this happen in our state, which was invaluable. I didn’t know it at the time. I was just doing a job. I was in a barn, and I knew that I loved that, but that really kind of helped me develop some really valuable relationships. About fifteen years ago, I took a job as a herdsperson in Northwestern Vermont, milking and managing about 150 cows, primarily Holsteins, but I had started my own little project herd of Guernseys.
Amber Blodgett: 03:27
And that herd grew in this setting. And I was able to begin a small processing business. So I made cultured butter and bottled buttermilk and cream-top milk and did all the marketing and some direct-to-consumer stuff like farmers markets and such. And that felt really full circle to me. I was growing these cows.
Amber Blodgett: 03:51
I was managing this herd. I was milking them six or seven days a week. And I was taking that product and adding some value to it and getting it into my community. That was really… it was… That was very… Sorry. Go ahead.
Glenda Pereira: 04:09
No. I think, and you mentioned it previously, it really supported sort of the role you’re in today. Some of those early experiences, you know, you mentioned you didn’t know it at the time, but the skills you were developing and everything you were learning, which you were curious about on your own, really supported you. I mean, making butter is a fantastic skill to have because who doesn’t love butter?
Amber Blodgett: 04:37
Yes. Everybody’s
Glenda Pereira: 04:39
Everybody eats butter. We all want butter. And Guernseys, I know you also had Holsteins, but Guernseys are a great breed for making all the creams. And in addition, they also have the A2A2 protein. I don’t know if folks are familiar with that.
Glenda Pereira: 04:54
But Guernsey milk is basically like butter already. So it was really supporting your career building to get to the place you’re in today as the dairy research specialist.
Amber Blodgett: 05:05
Yeah. I could not have foreseen it at the time. I thought that I would farm until I died. That was where I was at. But as many who have taken this path before me know, farming full time, processing full time, marketing, and running a business full time, it’s really challenging to make that a fully sustainable long-term thing.
Amber Blodgett: 05:31
Due to a variety of reasons and circumstances outside of my control, I found myself making a career shift about three years ago. And I was super, super fortunate to find this spot on the UVM Extension Northwest Crops and Soils team. As you introduced me, the job title they gave me is dairy research specialist.
Glenda Pereira: 05:53
And when I
Amber Blodgett: 05:54
spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly that means, and it turns out, like you said, it means a whole bunch of things. There’s no one-word answer to the work I do, which fits me really well. You know? I love that every day is a little bit different. So some of the stuff I do for or with my team is to develop resources on funding opportunities for dairy producers and plan and facilitate workshops and events across the state.
Amber Blodgett: 06:21
And I also get to do both on-farm research and more controlled research trials. As part of this team, it’s so much fun collecting information from farmers and from trials at our research farms. The work is so diverse and seasonal, and it’s always really exciting and fun to do. I enjoy showing up for work every day.
Glenda Pereira: 06:46
Before you talk more, I want you to shout out the field day you guys have every year. So folks might not be familiar with your field day, but they can actually check out in person the research that you and your team are doing every year, every summer.
Amber Blodgett: 07:01
We just had our field day, our nineteenth annual field day this past July. I think we had around 250 people show up at our research farm called Border View Farm up in Alburgh at Roger Rainville’s farm. He’s a retired dairy farmer, and he has worked with Heather to really develop this piece of land to do all these amazing research trials. And we have everything. Corn variety trials, forage variety trials.
Amber Blodgett: 07:33
We look at harvest techniques across different treatments. We have some grains, lots of grain trials, and some vegetables. We did some strawberries. There were hemp and flax for fiber production. So the morning of that event is this huge tour of all of these trials, which is just really impressive.
Amber Blodgett: 07:55
There’s a ton of work that goes into making the farm and all of the research plots look nice and clean, and they’re all labeled. And it’s really, really impressive. And then we have these breakout sessions in the afternoon where folks can go learn about different aspects of the work that we’re doing. Right. And it really brings in a diverse crew of people and just showcases, yeah,
Amber Blodgett: 08:23
all the work that’s being done in agriculture. So folks
Glenda Pereira: 08:26
can look forward to that next July. So it’s held annually in July. And we’ll add to the show notes where you can contact Amber and her team. But if folks haven’t attended, it’s definitely something to check out, and there’s a lot of opportunity to learn.
Amber Blodgett: 08:41
Lunch is always on point, and there’s always free ice cream. So, yeah, it’s worth
Glenda Pereira: 08:47
it. And speaking of ice cream, we’re gonna be talking some about one of the projects that you’re leading, the Ben and Jerry’s Low Carbon Dairy Pilot Project. You mentioned before, when we were just getting our thoughts together, that being a farmer and having met so many of the farmers who have been in the Vermont dairy industry for a long time helped you really get started on some of these projects that you’re currently working on?
Amber Blodgett: 09:21
When I was hired onto this team, the Northwest Crops and Soils team has historically worked with Ben and Jerry’s in some capacity, either through technical service or research. And when I started, they were about a year into supporting Ben and Jerry’s with this Low Carbon Dairy Pilot Program. And as it turned out, like, some of the folks that are involved in this initiative were people that I had known and worked with for years. So it was just really amazing. And I get a little sentimental and a little, like, cheesy about it every time I start talking about it.
Amber Blodgett: 09:55
My dear friend Rebecca had recently taken this job coordinating this program. And one of my favorite teachers from the Miner Institute, Colt, who we’ve also done a webinar with, was consulting as a dairy nutritionist on this project as part of our team. And most of the partnering farms that were part of this project, I had either worked with or, like, literally sat next to at some community event within the past decade or two. It was really impossible for me to believe I was able to work with this group of people. In fact, one of the partnering farms was the farm where I started working when I was 14, milking cows. I feel just so fortunate to have stumbled into this perfect fit, even though the project was just so… it’s a big project, as we’ll talk about here.
Amber Blodgett: 10:50
And I don’t know if we ever really figured it all out, but we did a ton of work with these farms. And the human aspect of all this work was really impactful for me. And I know for Rebecca and Per, it was really great to have such a kind of connected group of folks working together towards a common goal.
Glenda Pereira: 11:09
Yeah. And I will say, oftentimes people ask me, you know, “You must work with cows all the time. You’re always with cows 24/7.” But really, most of my job is with people. And the relationships and communication that we have with farmers in this role as technical service providers are the basis for all of our work.
Glenda Pereira: 11:33
We have to have a good foundation to be able to work with the farmers. They have to connect with us. They have to trust us. They have to know that if we set a time for when we’re gonna be there, we’re gonna have this conversation, this meeting. We’re gonna be reliable.
Glenda Pereira: 11:47
We’re gonna be a support network for them. And so it’s funny because people always say, oh, you must work with cows all the time. But really, I mean, my job is really working with people. Because the people who manage the cows are who I’m working with. I’m not going as the person and making reproductive decisions.
Glenda Pereira: 12:06
I’m working with the herdsperson to think about: This is what the pregnancy rate is currently. How can we potentially improve it, if that’s what you’re wanting to do? Here are potential management changes, and we have a brainstorming session. So it’s funny you mentioned that because I think some of this was twofold, I’m hearing. This project really helped you learn how to be in this role because of the relationships you already had. When you’re starting in a new role, it can be challenging to learn all the skills if everything’s an obstacle.
Glenda Pereira: 12:37
But if you have people who really wanna see you succeed, you’re gonna call them and say, hey. We need to collect these measurements today. They’re gonna be open and receptive to you. It really helps make the project successful and exciting. Like you mentioned, you’re really excited to come to work every day.
Amber Blodgett: 12:54
I was invested, right? Like, we are all just invested in each other and each other’s success, which we’ll talk about a little bit later. I was able to do exit interviews with all the farms at the end of this project. And just hearing their feedback was really awesome.
Amber Blodgett: 13:13
But it was unexpected because I think they came up with the same conclusion. They really learned a lot about things like cover cropping or crop rotation, or they really liked doing the pasture and hayland renovation. But at the end of the day, every single one of these farms said, “Hey, I really liked having another set of eyes on my farm. I really liked having someone to talk about my farm with. I really liked that you and Kurt showed up every few weeks, and I knew you were looking at something and tracking and measuring.”
Amber Blodgett: 13:49
“And I didn’t know exactly what it was at the time, but I really appreciated having other people on my farm talking to me,” which, yeah, was a theme. I don’t know. It surprised me that that was the value everyone picked out for this project. I’m gonna talk about all the things that we did, but that was a big take-home message.
Glenda Pereira: 14:09
You became almost an extension of their farm team. And I’ve worked with some farms in that capacity too, where oftentimes I offered to be a facilitator. And all I’m doing is organizing meetings for the farm and taking notes, but we invite all the key players they wanna invite to have a farm team meeting. And I can always be there to support whatever brainstorming we’re doing, but we’re like an extension of their farm team, even though we can’t go to every single farm and be that person. But for the farms we work with throughout our careers, we can be that person for them.
Glenda Pereira: 14:46
Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about this project and why Ben and Jerry’s wanted to work with the farms that were, I’m assuming, supplying milk to the Ben and Jerry’s production line.
Amber Blodgett: 15:00
Yeah. So it’s no secret that Ben and Jerry’s is a pretty sizable processor with deep roots in our state of Vermont, and their brand really promotes this holistic approach to both sustainability and environmental stewardship and also the people that are involved in all aspects of their business. There it is again. But they’ve made an effort to really understand where their company’s greenhouse gas emissions come from as part of that environmental stewardship pillar of their business. And what they did was they did some work to identify where those greenhouse gas emissions were coming from. Mm-hmm.
Amber Blodgett: 15:39
They did that across the board with a baseline greenhouse gas emissions assessment. And they found that about half, or 46%, of their company’s total emissions come from dairy production, which may or may not be surprising. A business or processor this big has a whole bunch of different aspects that will contribute to its greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a ton of transport. They’re sourcing other ingredients from places.
Amber Blodgett: 16:06
There’s franchises and packaging and a whole bunch of things that go into that calculation. But dairy is a big contributor. So they set out to learn what can be done in the real world to move the needle, not only for the company, but also on an individual farm scale. So this Ben and Jerry’s Low Carbon Dairy Pilot Program, as I said, it got started before I joined the team, but it worked locally with seven farms that were located in Northwestern Vermont. The farm size ranged from 60 cows to about a thousand milking cows.
Amber Blodgett: 16:43
So, there was a big range in farm sizes, and all the farms were at different places with technology, crop production, and management. But they were all run by folks who are really invested in long-term business sustainability and being part of this dairy industry, and who are also stewards of the environment. They want to do better. So the purpose of the program was to really develop a whole-farm approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and identify what realistically can be done by individual farms to move the needle on their carbon footprint. And the first step was to figure out how we might quantify a farm’s carbon footprint. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
Amber Blodgett: 17:29
Yes. And there’s a variety of tools out there that do these calculations for farms. These exist. But at the end of the day, what we look at is a farm’s carbon intensity in terms of their total greenhouse gas emissions divided by fat- and protein-corrected milk production. So it’s an efficiency game.
Amber Blodgett: 17:50
It boils down to production efficiency, which is super handy because efficiency is really the foundation of all aspects of sustainability on all dairy farms. That’s where it’s at. We’re used to benchmarking for labor efficiency and crop production efficiency and milk production efficiency. And this program was just putting all that together with maybe just a bit of a
Glenda Pereira: 18:14
twist on it. And then, for a company like Ben and Jerry’s, part of it was their curiosity about the farms supplying product to them and quantifying what those farms were doing. And of course, like I said, there was a wide spectrum of farmers participating, but it helped quantify that. And of course, farmers are efficient. I’ve often had to talk to people, and they’re surprised that farmers are efficient. And I’m like, well, of course they are.
Glenda Pereira: 18:45
They have to be. There is no choice. They have to be efficient because there’s little time and little money to go around, and they’re doing their best with the resources they have access to. Weather is one of the biggest challenges they have to manage, which affects forage, etcetera. But I think it’s really neat that Ben and Jerry’s wanted to quantify this and put some numbers to it. And, like you said, give it that twist with efficiency, and that was greenhouse gas emissions per fat- and protein-corrected milk. Is that correct?
Glenda Pereira: 19:22
Can you say that again? Yeah.
Amber Blodgett: 19:23
Yeah. So I think it was, like, per kilogram of fat- and protein-corrected milk. Okay. So, production efficiency. Components matter.
Amber Blodgett: 19:34
Let me back up a minute. For transparency, on the Ben and Jerry’s side for these partnering farms, they were compensated across the three years of the program. They were compensated for being part of the program. That meant that they would share pretty much any information that we asked for. And they were also offered the opportunity to get some cost sharing on some equipment or, I guess, not all equipment improvements, just general improvements, which was great.
Amber Blodgett: 20:04
If you look at the big-picture dairy industry, having that kind of financial support from a processor is a big deal, and it’s not commonplace. And so the relative success of this program, I think, can also be evaluated based on how farms feel about receiving support from the industry and food processors, not just from a service provider or through a technical avenue, but also financially, because we know that, hey, dollars talk. And at the end of the day, if a farm can’t be profitable or diversify its income streams, that’s really gonna be a barrier to long-term sustainability. So I don’t know who came up with that financial structure on the Ben and Jerry’s side, but I think it’s just really important to note the value of that to our farms in this kind of program. All right.
Amber Blodgett: 21:09
So the project goals for these seven farms in the short term were for the seven farms to reduce their dairy greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 50% below the industry average while optimizing farm productivity and financial performance and increasing farm resilience. So a bit of a mouthful, but it all makes sense. Long term, Ben and Jerry’s was hoping to use this pilot program to figure out what would work on more farms. So Ben and Jerry’s doesn’t just buy cream from seven farms. There’s an entire supply chain.
Amber Blodgett: 21:50
And so they really wanted to use this pilot program to see what works in the real world that they could scale across other farms in their supply chain and that would make a difference. And they identified… let’s go back a little bit here. The biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions on a dairy farm are enteric methane, the methane that cows burp up as ruminants. There are some greenhouse gases from manure and then also from cropping, like the import of synthetic nutrients and fertilizers.
Amber Blodgett: 22:28
So again, all of these components go back to efficiency. We want to be as efficient as possible. We want to make those ruminants as efficient as possible, meaning we’re feeding them nutrients and supporting rumen health so that they are working as efficiently as possible to produce that milk and those components. On the cropping end, we are trying to optimize yield and nutrients for our crops so that we’re getting essentially the best bang for our buck out of every acre, because we don’t have to spend money to buy in nutrients if we can grow them. Right.
Amber Blodgett: 23:06
And also, we want to not overapply fertilizers because it’s a real cost. It also has some other environmental implications. So it’s a whole-farm approach here to looking at all those different sources of greenhouse gas emissions on dairy farms. And the program came up with seven different categories of intervention. For instance, one of the interventions is regenerative agriculture.
Amber Blodgett: 23:33
What are we talking about? We’re talking about using reduced- or no-till strategies and preserving soil health. We’re talking about using cover crops to keep the soil covered and making sure we’re protecting our waterways. We’re talking about using crop rotation as a crop management strategy. So I
Glenda Pereira: 23:52
need to do everything that builds organic matter and holds nutrients in place, it seems like.
Amber Blodgett: 23:58
Yeah. That whole nutrient cycle, making it more efficient, making it more cost-effective. What’s cool, though, is that making that system more efficient and cost-effective is also what’s going to impact the farm’s bottom line. It’s spending your dollars more efficiently to get the most out of what you have. The other interventions or pillars that supported this program were looking at increasing the quality and quantity of homegrown forages in the diet, which might seem a little counterintuitive because we know that forages in the rumen produce methane.
Amber Blodgett: 24:36
But the flip side is that if you can grow more of your own nutrients for your cows and purchase fewer concentrates, that’s going to have a bigger impact on your farm’s carbon footprint. Yeah. And also, we know that forages in the ration really support component production, healthy rumens, and healthy animals. Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: 25:00
And decreasing the transportation of those forages is one of the ways. Like you mentioned, transportation is a big contributor to greenhouse gases for many companies. So reducing that, as well as, I think, just being able to control your forage quality a little bit more, which, again, the weather hasn’t helped with in the past couple of years. But growing your own forages can sometimes give you that ability. Sometimes it’s a constraint that you can’t get out to make forage today or tomorrow, just based on logistics. But yes, it certainly can be an intervention.
Amber Blodgett: 25:38
Yeah. And I think the program was really banking on a rumen modifier or a feed additive that would help reduce that and move the dial on that enteric emissions number. We didn’t quite get there. They were looking at some seaweed products in the beginning that didn’t pass, like, federal inspections. So that was a bummer.
Amber Blodgett: 26:00
And then we looked at some other products on the market and just ran out of time to integrate these into the farms’ management. I also think there are some real financial barriers to some of those additives. So clearly, there needs to be a system in place to make it worthwhile for farms to use these additives if that’s an industry goal. I think for Ben and Jerry’s, it is. They want to encourage that.
Amber Blodgett: 26:25
And there’s a lot of opportunity there and hopefully some financial gain that will be developed in the future. But we didn’t get there during this pilot program. We also looked at animal welfare and longevity. Again, efficiency, like the most milk per animal, and also looking at replacements. So, the number of replacements you have in a herd, rightsizing the replacements to your herd so that you’re not… because those heifers… Let me back up a little.
Amber Blodgett: 26:58
The denominator of this equation is fat- and protein-corrected milk production, and you have to spread that across all of your animals. If you have all these replacements who are not generating any fat- and protein-corrected milk, then you need to make sure you don’t have too many of them because they’re messing up your numbers.
Glenda Pereira: 27:16
And it’s not applicable right now because I don’t know anyone who’s got an excess of heifers right now. I think everybody’s short. But certainly, some farms at the time when you were conducting this project might have had too many heifers, might have been at potentially 50% replacement rate and needed to be at 30% or 20% just based on how many cows were entering their milking string.
Amber Blodgett: 27:40
Yeah. Yes. And, I mean, I think we have this whole beef-on-dairy market to really thank for correcting that in a, like, financially responsible… I don’t know, that’s probably not the right term, but making it financially attractive not to have too many replacements because of the value of those black calves. Yeah. Which is great.
Amber Blodgett: 28:01
Because some farms, like you said, hadn’t really looked at that before. You just raise everything that drops because that’s where you’re at. Yep. You know? All right.
Amber Blodgett: 28:09
So our team worked with the partnering farms to assess their starting point for each of the focuses or pillars, the seven focuses of this program. And really on a farm-by-farm basis, we helped to identify the potential areas for improvement and set some goals for the program and the individual farms. And then it just became really a matter of measuring things and tracking them over time. And then being boots on the ground on the farms to be like, hey, this small thing or this big thing is gonna move the needle for you. We worked with the Ben and Jerry’s team as well as other contractors and stakeholders to facilitate some educational opportunities for the farms.
Amber Blodgett: 28:50
We had some speakers come in, which was great. And we also made an effort to present the information and data that we gathered from these farms, as well as the data we collected through independent, controlled research trials on our research farm, both to the group and to the individual farms. That looked like what we called a kitchen table meeting every year, where our team and some of the Ben and Jerry’s team would literally go to these farms, often to their homes or farm offices, sit around their kitchen table, and talk through the numbers we had collected in the various areas of data collection. We would try to figure out what the barrier was to making an improvement. I’ll give you an example. One of the things we looked at was feed storage, because feed storage is a common barrier on farms, not only to preserving the nutrients harvested from the field, but also to having enough space for enough forage inclusion in the ration to move the needle. And so we were able to sit down at the table as a team and be like, right, how can we segregate these feeds better?
Amber Blodgett: 30:05
And so some farmers were able to use cost-share money to pour a new bunk or put up a wall so that they could keep their first cut and second cut, or their first cut and fourth cut, separately and feed them more appropriately to the biological needs of their feeding groups. We also had some farms that were able to get cost-share funding to invest in bunk roller packers to improve their packing density. Kurt and I were able to go every month to every farm and use the Dairy One forage probe and do the dry matter calculation and everything to come up with, “This is what your bunk density is for all the feeds that you have open.” And if you’re not doing that, you just don’t know. We also did forage sampling. We sampled all of their open forages every month. That’s the only way you can really have a handle on how your forage quality is changing.
Amber Blodgett: 31:00
And it’s really the only way you can have the proof and the foundational information that you need to make business or management decisions, essentially.
Glenda Pereira: 31:13
And you said it earlier, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. So you and Kurt were measuring. You were helping these farms to measure. And oftentimes, time is a constraint for farms. So you and Kurt were able to measure this to then give them some real numbers to back up the management change that they were gonna potentially have to implement.
Glenda Pereira: 31:39
Yeah.
Amber Blodgett: 31:40
Yeah. And then it was a long enough program that we could also see some results. For example, I’m gonna shift gears a little bit here. One of the other things our team did with the farms was a lot of pre-sidedress soil nitrate testing for cornfields. And as part of being in the Ben and Jerry’s world, these farms are required to have a certain number of those tests done every year, but not necessarily required to use them.
Amber Blodgett: 32:13
So not only did we do the pre-sidedress soil nitrate testing and get the results to the farms in a timely fashion so that they could use them, we also followed up by taking cornstalk nitrate concentration tests at the end of the season. Then we worked with each farm to go back and see: How much fertilizer did you apply? Did you apply over the recommended rate? And how did that affect how much nitrogen you may have wasted or that the plants didn’t use efficiently? And I think that even if the numbers didn’t necessarily support exactly what we were going for, the thought process and the whole communication of what we were doing and how the science works really impacted folks.
Amber Blodgett: 33:03
That encouraged them to really look at their PSNTs and apply nitrogen within their comfort level. We know those PSNTs are also impacted by, like you said, weather, soil type, and a whole bunch of other factors that are outside of our control. But it’s a mindset shift. And what is
Glenda Pereira: 33:24
the PSNT? I don’t know.
Amber Blodgett: 33:27
The PSNT is the pre-sidedress…
Glenda Pereira: 33:30
Sorry.
Amber Blodgett: 33:30
Yes. Soil nitrate test. Yes. Yes. It’s measuring how much nitrogen is in the soil available for that corn crop to take up before you apply that topdress in July or at the right growth stage.
Amber Blodgett: 33:42
And really, for farms that are applying manure or are used to using a lot of synthetic nitrogen, they might not need to topdress as much as they always have. And they’ve always applied a certain amount of nitrogen because that’s what they’ve always done. Right. So this thought experiment, thought process, I think, had an impact on folks, which was great because, again, it benefits the program because we’re trying to reduce those imported nutrients. But also, you can save a ton of money, right, without impacting yield and quality.
Amber Blodgett: 34:21
And that’s a real cost. All right.
Glenda Pereira: 34:25
Yeah. And that was one of the questions I wanted to ask you: What are some things that surprised you and the farmers participating in this program? And it seemed like the expectations they had going into the program were much different from the expectations when they exited the program because there were so many other benefits they were potentially not thinking about. Crop production and crop yields, and I don’t know if you mentioned this, but feed cost is a substantial part of the cost of milk production. It’s about 50%, I think 46% to 50%, of your cost of producing milk.
Glenda Pereira: 35:04
And so, again, going back to that homegrown forage conversation, fertilizers and potentially applying nitrogen when the plant doesn’t need it are extremely costly. You’re impacting all of these variables. Feed cost is potentially gonna be reduced because you’re being more strategic in how you’re applying the nutrients the plant needs. Yep.
Amber Blodgett: 35:31
Yeah. And one of the other forage-related aspects that we worked on with these farms was renovating perennial grass stands to include some legumes and grass varieties that work best in our area and in our soil types to improve overall fiber digestibility and nutrient content, again, to support that component production and reduce the need for concentrate purchases. And through this program, we worked with these seven farms, and we renovated over 150 acres across these farms. And we did it in a few different ways. We met the farms where they were at. There are some different ways you can do this.
Amber Blodgett: 36:12
You can terminate the existing crop and clear-seed everything, or you can no-till drill seed into existing fields. So, like I said, across the three years, we renovated over 150 acres with this seed mix that we thought would really fit the bill for most of these farms. It had some alfalfa, some clover, and some really good varieties of fescues and orchard grass. And then we went through and measured the first-cut yields of the renovated fields and compared them to the first-cut yields of unimproved fields for each farm. So, fields under similar management, but lots of variables here.
Amber Blodgett: 36:56
Still, this is not a controlled experiment. This is real farm data collection. But we found that the renovated fields yielded about 0.35 tons of dry matter more than the unimproved fields, which is a real number and a real mindset shift for a lot of folks. And I’m not saying just farms in this program, but for some folks, a hayfield is a hayfield is a hayfield.
Amber Blodgett: 37:22
Right. You mow it. You take. You give when you can. But mostly, it’s a taking game.
Amber Blodgett: 37:28
So, putting this mindset shift into place, that if we can do some renovation and give something to this field in terms of seed and fertility that will support production efficiency and really move the needle on your feed costs, this is a worthwhile investment in the land, in your business, and in the cows. And so we really worked with these farms to figure out how they can best manage for the longevity of those fields too. So we’re looking at mowing height and harvest frequency, all those management factors that, unless someone is right there asking what you’re doing and talking you through it, you just follow the same routine you always have. Right?
Glenda Pereira: 38:24
And do you think there were management practices that folks were more eager to adopt than others? The crop one seems very evident because if I’m saving X amount on fertilizer next year because I’ve introduced legumes that are nitrogen-fixing, that’s a really nice one. But I’m curious to know if there were any clear practices that folks leaned more toward than others. But maybe because you and Kurt, and other ag service providers, were present for support, they felt they had the infrastructure to put these practices in place.
Amber Blodgett: 39:05
Yeah. I mentioned earlier that, as part of the wrap-up for this program, and we’re still in the process of wrapping up this program, we don’t have our final individual farm carbon footprints. So I can’t answer the question: Were we successful in reducing carbon emissions by over 50%? I’m not sure. I don’t have those answers yet, but I was able to conduct individual, I’m using air quotes, “exit interviews” with these farms, which were so much fun.
Amber Blodgett: 39:34
And I’m not just blabbering here. I’m going to answer your question. We asked a whole bunch of questions, including which intervention, we use the term “intervention,” or which practice or part of this program had the largest impact on your farm? And over half of the farms said that learning about and implementing crop rotation and renovation strategies to improve forage yield and quality was at the top of the list. We also had a few of the farms get cost-share funding for feed pushers in their barns, and that had a huge impact.
Amber Blodgett: 40:10
They immediately saw a bump in their bulk tank, which is not a surprise, but it’s something they might not necessarily have had access to if they hadn’t been part of this program. We didn’t talk about some of the other things, but we trialed some nitrogen inhibitors on some of the farms, and they were super weather-dependent because nitrogen volatilization is affected by the weather and the growing conditions. But folks really liked that and liked learning about it and seeing its impacts. They get that it’s sort of an insurance policy. They also said that improving feed storage, in terms of knowing what their bunk packing and bunk density are, and having someone to talk with about changes to their bunk packing, or not bunk packing, their feed storage infrastructure, like having someone to bounce ideas off about where they’re going to store feed, how they’re going to store feed, and what they need, was really impactful for them.
Amber Blodgett: 41:22
And we also worked with some precision ag technology, like some variable-rate fertilizing trials on farms, and folks were really interested in that. A lot of them were really excited about where technology is going from a crop management standpoint. Sure. And the other question we asked, so we asked first, like I said, which of those practices had the largest impact? We also said, well, what was the easiest to implement?
Amber Blodgett: 41:59
And they said, well, the PSNT testing and the CSNT testing, because they didn’t have to do anything for it. We were doing it for them. Yeah. But it was great that they were interested in that. You know? Or they had been doing it for years and finally looked at it.
Amber Blodgett: 42:14
All the farms in the program kind of started looking at cover cropping a little bit differently in terms of, like, harvesting that cover crop for some really high-quality forage.
Glenda Pereira: 42:25
Yeah.
Amber Blodgett: 42:26
To get more out of their land base. Double cropping is gonna improve their overall crop production efficiency. We also had energy audits done on all of the farms, with major improvements in terms of, like, energy efficiency. And all the farms did at least one Novus Cows assessment. So we looked at animal welfare in terms of lameness, stocking density, and their facilities.
Amber Blodgett: 42:57
Several of the farms were able to use that information to get new stalls or justify the need for improvements and investments in their facilities. The biggest barriers these farms found in implementing these practices were barriers that we see, you know, very common barriers: labor, finances, and costs. Everything’s expensive. Weather, like you said, is a wild card. We don’t have any control over that. Education.
Amber Blodgett: 43:35
You know, some of the practices were pretty new or just practices they weren’t familiar with. So they had to learn about them. They had to think about them. And all of these farms were super willing to try something new, but it’s different to be willing to try something new than it is to have buy-in. Yep.
Amber Blodgett: 43:56
There was
Glenda Pereira: 43:57
a learning curve to a lot of these practices, which takes time. But something I think was beneficial for this project was that they had you and Kurt, and they had each other. And I think you probably had group meetings where all seven farms were able to come together and talk about this amongst themselves. So that was beneficial too. They had each other, and then they had us technical service providers to take on some of the energy and time required to learn a new practice and implement it.
Amber Blodgett: 44:32
Yeah. Yeah. And each farm was a little bit different in that aspect too. It was very clear, looking across the three years of the program and talking to them at the end, how much buy-in they had for the program. We can’t force farm owners to participate in this stuff.
Amber Blodgett: 44:53
We weren’t looking to force them to participate in anything, but it was really clear that the ones who were most engaged, and there was a scale of who was more or less engaged, really got the most benefit out of it, both financially and in their management mindset, in all aspects of it.
Glenda Pereira: 45:16
I’m curious too. Something I just wanted to highlight was, as you were working with these farms, did they indicate any future educational opportunities they would have liked to see? Or what are some of the things they mentioned that you’re potentially participating in as future program areas and educational topics?
Amber Blodgett: 45:39
Yeah. I was happy that some of the farms called out that we had done some financial risk-and-reward analysis for some of the practices, but we didn’t really dive deeply into the financial aspects. And they were like, “Hey, I want specific tools so that I can really evaluate the financial risks and rewards for my farm for this.” So I think a lot of those tools exist. It’s just finding the tool that works best for the scenario.
Amber Blodgett: 46:19
But it was great to hear that that was on their radar. They were really interested in that. A lot of the farms, like I said, are super into precision ag technology and using drones and variable-rate spreading technology. And a lot of these folks are getting programs on their tractors to measure yield and quality right off the field. So I think there’s still a lot of technical service opportunity in helping them dial in which metrics and information they want to look at.
Amber Blodgett: 46:50
We’ve talked about that a lot in the webinar series this year, as we’ve looked at different technologies that dairy producers are using. It’s so much data. What is going to be the most useful to them? And they recognize that. I think the farms we were working with were super excited to continue working with us in that area. For us now, for our team, since this pilot project is over, let’s back up a little bit here.
Amber Blodgett: 47:20
As the pilot project has concluded, the goals for the Ben and Jerry’s program are really to determine what worked best in a real-world, on-farm scenario and what we think will move the needle for greenhouse gas emissions. And again, you don’t have to understand all the science behind that. It’s really just about efficiency. It’s about setting and meeting some real fat- and protein-corrected milk production goals and dialing in how nutrients cycle on your farm. So the Ben and Jerry’s team wants to use this as a way to identify and move forward with implementing some of these practices on other farms they work with and other farms in their supply chain.
Amber Blodgett: 48:10
For us, we were really excited about helping farms grow more nutrients and looking at how fermentation, preservation, and storage can help keep those nutrients intact and available for the cow and support that fat- and protein-corrected milk production. So, for the next two years, we’ll be tracking those renovated fields that I talked about. You know, I said there are over 150 acres of fields that were either clear-seeded or renovated in some capacity. And so what we’re doing now is looking at 18 fields where we’re collecting yield and quality samples and data from every cut to see how long that effort to improve the field lasts. Again, what management factors support the longevity of that stand?
Amber Blodgett: 49:10
So we’re looking at, like, cutting height and cutting frequency, but really just how well these seed mixes persevere in the environment. And hopefully we’ll be able to connect that back to… But it’d also be great to associate that with a reduction in concentrate purchases for these farms. Right. That’s a big goal. But just to collect more supporting information on how farms can best grow more of their own nutrients.
Glenda Pereira: 49:45
I think that’s… You mentioned that your team’s gonna be working on some future projects, and one of them is growing forages that potentially have more amino acids in them. So I think that’s an exciting project to come, as well as looking at how you can improve management to improve water quality, not only for your animals, but overall in the state of Vermont. And so, as you were talking about all of the efficiency components of this project, I think you’re gonna continue to work on that efficiency metric because water quality is important, as well as, like you said, growing more of your own nutrients and improving their quality. Amino acids are what build the proteins that then build everything within the animal.
Glenda Pereira: 50:39
So, growing better forage and specifically focusing on the amino acid component, I think, is something that can also move the needle. And I don’t know if it’s related to Ben and Jerry’s or not, but you mentioned that those are gonna be some projects your team’s focusing on.
Amber Blodgett: 50:56
Yeah. Yeah. Ben and Jerry’s continues to support our research. They understand the value it has for farms. This whole precision feeding, precision feed management, and precision amino acid feeding is so exciting when it comes to dairy nutrition and the potential that’s out there.
Amber Blodgett: 51:20
You know? Like, the folks who are doing this research have said, “Our dairy herd has the genetic potential to produce these unlimited components. We just have to support it, not just nutritionally, but through management also.” But that’s great. How can we do that as cost-effectively as possible? Because those amino acid products, well, they might get you to your goal.
Amber Blodgett: 51:47
They’re expensive. And if we can identify the forages, the forage species, the forage varieties, and the management that will help us optimize the amino acid content in our homegrown forages, that’s gonna be clutch for dairy nutrition and the long-term sustainability of these farms.
Glenda Pereira: 52:17
It’s just gonna improve our bottom line again because feed is really expensive, and those minerals, vitamins, and certainly protein are the costly components within the cost of production for feed. We don’t tend to raise a ton of protein here in the Northeast and in New England. A lot of our protein comes from the Midwest or other sources or areas of the country. And so improving our forage production to be able to do that will decrease our overall feed cost, which is really beneficial.
Amber Blodgett: 52:51
You bring up an interesting point here. Some farms are really used to buying protein, but it’s not cheap. And also, I feel like it’s a real New England, maybe a Vermont, kind of pride in who you are. If you can grow it yourself, that’s what you’re gonna do. And we can.
Amber Blodgett: 53:16
You know? There are challenges. You have to be really on top of your management. You have to be on point, but we can do it. Yep.
Amber Blodgett: 53:26
If we can,
Glenda Pereira: 53:28
we’re going to.
Amber Blodgett: 53:29
You know?
Glenda Pereira: 53:31
And I think it’s having projects like these and technical assistance providers like you and Kurt to support those goals, because it takes a lot to measure all of these data points and even make sense of them. And those table talks you mentioned, where the team came together, are really where some of these things happen, and farmers need support in this capacity. So it’s really exciting that this project was able to do that and that we have you as a resource continuing to conduct this work. And we were previously talking about how the three states, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, were looking to the future to potentially do more professional development training so that we can all continue to provide these services and measurements. I think measuring is really what we can help farmers with, to again meet those long-term sustainability goals, which include measuring all the burdensome data points that take time.
Amber Blodgett: 54:35
Yeah. Hey, Glenda. I think you really nailed it there because I struggle with this a little bit. I think it’s, you know, because my background is in actually farming and managing cows. I know that farmers are smart people.
Amber Blodgett: 54:52
They can find the information they need. They can learn whatever they wanna learn. They don’t need service providers to tell them how to do it because they’re already doing it, and they already see the results of what they’re doing. In this role, what we have to offer as service providers and Extension folks is support in collecting that information and making it meaningful and useful so they can actually use it to make decisions, because they’re busy. You know?
Amber Blodgett: 55:25
They’re busy doing the thing. So if we can support them in taking the information they’re already producing and delivering it in a way that helps them make a decision, that’s where it’s at, value-wise, for them. And it’s super rewarding for us too, I think. Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: 55:43
I couldn’t agree more. Cool. Well, thank you so much, Amber, for sitting down with me today and chatting about this Ben and Jerry’s project, which was really critical in, you know, helping the seven farms you worked with. But I know it has a much bigger and broader impact on the dairy industry in Vermont and on any of the dairy production folks or folks in the supply chain of the Ben and Jerry’s project. The conversation we had today, this project, and everything you shared can potentially give insight to other farms and service providers about how they can better support their clients.
Glenda Pereira: 56:20
So this was super knowledgeable. Thank you again, Amber, and you’re an asset to our New England dairy industry, so I’m super thankful to have you as a partner and collaborator.
Amber Blodgett: 56:32
No. I really appreciate that. It feels so good to hear.
Glenda Pereira: 56:37
All right. Well, if folks have topic suggestions, questions, or comments, be sure to email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.