Victor Green

The DSWR project is a six-year, nationwide research project looking at soil health, ghg emissions and new manure products. The project is an intensive comparison of two different management systems. It compares traditional management practices of using liquid dairy manure, no cover cropping and full tillage to a system that utilizes reduced tillage, cover crops, soil amendments and new manure technology products.  The presentation will briefly review the project and present learnings to date. 

Carol Adair, Heather Darby

To determine the impact of biochar on CO2, CH4, and N2O emissions, we installed a corn silage experiment at Borderview Farm, Vermont with eight treatments: manure injection, injection*biochar, broadcast manure, broadcast * biochar, fertilizer* biochar, biochar, and control. Biochar reduces growing season N2O fluxes from manure by 50%. Biochar reduced N losses via N2O by 4 lb/acre (~4400 g N2O-N/hectare) in broadcast manure treatments and by 8 lb/acre (~8900 g N2O-N/hectare) in injection manure treatments.

Jason Oliver, Lauren Ray

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from manure systems and improving the climate resiliency of farms will require various approaches. Here, we review the currently available strategies and technologies with potential to reduce emissions and improve resiliency. The focus will be on practical solutions that can be utilized by farmers and manure handlers today, as well as research highlights from ongoing work of the Cornell PRO-DAIRY, Dairy Environmental Systems program.

Jacob Hickman, Teng Lim

Dairy and swine operations are scrutinized due to perceived negative environmental impacts associated with manure handling practices. Many technologies exist to manage manure solids, nutrients and water; however, decision support tools are needed to assist farmers in evaluating the economic and environmental costs and benefits of implementing these systems. The MaNuRe team, a multi-discipline collaborative partnership across universities, is developing a tool that tracks the environmental and economic impacts of many of the current technologies and systems available. In this presentation, we will demonstrate several scenarios to show how the tool can be used to optimize manure management on dairy and swine farms across the U.S.

Laura Klaiber, Abby Augarten

Recognizing a need for more locally produced research, in 2013, Miner Institute (Chazy, NY) began conducting year-round edge-of-field drainage studies on the water quality of surface runoff and tile drainage from cropland in the Lake Champlain Watershed. These projects have investigated the environmental and agronomic impacts of systematic tile drainage in corn and grass fields receiving dairy manure. Other projects underway are examining the impacts of a rye cover crop after corn silage and no-till corn silage production.

Tibor Horvath

When a water quality impairment event occurs like the Lake Erie toxic algae bloom, the fingers immediately point to farms as the only contributors to water quality problems. Using a five soil pan rainfall simulator we can apply different animal manures in different rates and run a one-inch rainfall simulation to demonstrate how manure applications can reduce soil erosion and their relation to nutrient transport off farm fields. These runoff experiments can generate real life data to measure how solid and liquid manure spreading rates could affect nutrient transport from farm fields. Here we will share results from experiments conducted in North Carolina, Alabama, New York and Oregon, using the same rainfall simulator approach but different manure sources.

Mark Burger, Dale Dewing

Both the NYC and Skaneateles Watershed Agriculture Protection Programs are voluntary agreements with farmers to develop and implement whole-farm nutrient management plans. These programs serve as an alternative to installing costly filtration systems required by the Safe Drinking Water Act. The speakers will talk about the history and successes of the programs as well as the challenges faced.

Quirine Ketterings

Homegrown feed production is key for dairy farm sustainability. Crops need nutrients to grow and manure is an excellent nutrient source that contains all 17 essential nutrients. However, when applied to risky fields, at a high-risk time, and/or at a rate that exceeds the capacity of the soil to hold on to it and crop to take up the nutrients, manure nutrients can also contribute to nutrient losses to the environment. In this session we will talk about two main tools, the northeast region phosphorus index and the nitrate leaching index to identify high risk fields and implement beneficial management practices to reduce the risk of N and P loss to the environment.