What was your role in the dairy sustainability project?
I worked with NMSP research associate Olivia Godber, evaluating various software tools that assess greenhouse gas footprints of dairy farms. My main task was to run the same data in different tools to see how results differed. As I did this, I found that some tools required significantly more data than others and were not practical for farm use, while others were too general to give valuable information to the farmers. Olivia and I shared these insights with the tools’ developers, who are now looking into fine-tuning the software.
Besides working on greenhouse gas emissions, I wrote a fact sheet explaining how to choose the right tillage practice when running a farm greenhouse gas assessment model. Farms use a wide variety of tillage practices and it is not always clear how these diverse practices align with the more limited categories in the software tools.
Besides working on NMSP’s dairy sustainability project, Corrine also took the Whole-Farm Nutrient Management course, co-taught by Quirine Ketterings and Mike Van Amburgh.
Tell us about your experience with Whole-Farm Nutrient Management.
Whole-Farm Nutrient Management was one of my favorite courses at Cornell! The class integrates management of crops, manure, animals and nutrition to improve water and air quality while boosting farm profitability. Not only are these topics important for my career in dairy sustainability, but they’re also vital to my classmates who are going to become herd managers, geneticists, nutritionists, and crop managers.
After working with NMSP for months, I was familiar with many of the topics and software tools covered in class and was able to help my classmates with activities. I collaborated with the course's teaching assistant, NMSP Ph.D. student Agustin Olivo to plan assignments and navigate lab sessions. Some of the students started calling me Ms. Brown!
How have you grown from your work with NMSP?
Working with NMSP improved my writing skills, deepened my understanding of the research process and helped me become adept at using various greenhouse gas emission software tools.
I’ve also grown in my communication and teamwork skills and gained confidence in sharing knowledge with the team, my classmates, professors, and producers about my research with NMSP. These are all skills that I’ll be using in my new role with Newtrient.
What kind of work will you do with Newtrient?
I will be an Analyst in Sustainability Research and Initiatives, supporting Newtrient’s environmental programs through on-farm sustainability assessments. I’ll also contribute to U.S Dairy’s Net Zero Initiative by translating research into practical and accessible guidelines for farmers.
What are your thoughts on the future of dairy sustainability?
Dairy sustainability has an incredibly bright future. Today, only 11% of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and only 2% of those emissions come from the dairy industry. We can feed more people using less land, less water, less fuel, and fewer cows than we could just 10 years ago.
"Dairy farmers are working every day to reach sustainability goals and I’m excited and grateful that my NMSP experience helped me find a career contributing to this work. I’m eager to help farmers conserve natural resources for future generations while feeding the ever-growing population and taking care of their communities."
Megan Wittmeyer is a writer with the Cornell Nutrient Management Spear Program.