Quirine Ketterings, professor of animal science in the College of Agriculture and Life Science and director of the Cornell Nutrient Management Spear Program, is leading the New York component of the multistate, six-year project, “Dairy Soil and Water Regeneration: Building Soil Health to Reduce Greenhouse Gases, Improve Water Quality and Enable New Economic Benefits.”
The project is funded by The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR), a federal agency that enables public-private partnerships by matching private funding with federal dollars. FFAR granted $10 million to this project while private donors such as Nestlé and the dairy industry will provide matching funds and in-kind support for a total of $23.2 million.
“The whole purpose of this project is to measure the greenhouse gas footprint of dairy farming more accurately, and to evaluate strategies to reduce that footprint, or even enable dairy to become a net carbon sink,” Ketterings said. “We certainly can sequester carbon in the soil. But we have to figure out how to do it in a way that’s economic, practical and implementable for farmers.”
The most widely cited study on the greenhouse gas impact of dairy farming, published in 2013, found that it takes 1.23 kg of carbon dioxide to produce 1 kg of milk. However, the dairy industry has improved its footprint since then: Between 2007 and 2017, dairy producers reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 19%, land use by 21% and water use by 30%, according to research in the Journal of Animal Science.
There are also significant limitations in previous studies of carbon impact, and this grant aims to address those. Ketterings’ lab will measure greenhouse gas emissions from farmland – and analyze the impact of several carbon-suppressing and soil health-enhancing management practices – by taking regular, frequent measurements at a working dairy farm in western New York. Eight farms across the United States will be studied using the same equipment and methodologies.