Farm sustainability initiative earns national award

By Jamie Mara, director of strategic communications

A project involving Edge members and partners in the supply chain has earned national praise.

Lafayette Ag Stewardship Alliance (LASA), Farmers for Sustainable Food and Grande Cheese Company were recognized in June with an “Outstanding Supply Chain Collaboration” award from the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. Together with support from The Nature Conservancy and a host of others, they created and are testing a framework for conservation projects that protect soil and water quality, keep farms financially viable and demonstrate a commitment to sustainability to communities, customers and regulators. 

The Framework for Farm-Level Sustainability Projects is a first-of-its-kind handbook to help farmers determine what conservation practices are most useful for their individual farms, document the environmental and financial effects and showcase the value of sustainability throughout the supply chain. The framework is being used in a pilot project involving a dozen farms in LASA, a farmer-led watershed conservation group in southwestern Wisconsin.

LASA President Jim Winn, an Edge board member whose dairy is involved in the project, said his proactive group is well suited for the initiative.

“This effort builds on our members’ commitment to environmental stewardship, collaboration and transparency,” Winn said. “The framework gives us a tool to prove to ourselves, our neighbors and those who buy our products that there’s value in being innovative in the field.”

“Having our processor and others in the supply chain behind us, pulling in the same direction, is pretty powerful,” he said.

That’s where true success lies for sustainability, said Greg Siegenthaler, vice president of milk marketing and supply chain at Grande.

“As with this project, true sustainability efforts will only be realized if the work is done in partnership across our industry and throughout the supply chain,” Siegenthaler said. “In order to really move the needle and see ongoing success around sustainability, we must continue to engage all partners in the process, from farmer-led initiatives that result in greater results for both environmental sustainability and farm financial viability, to an ongoing commitment from processors and food manufacturers to engage in the conversation and partner on long-term solutions.”

The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy each year recognizes exceptional farms, businesses and partnerships for their socially responsible, economically viable and environmentally sound practices and technologies that have a broad and positive impact. The awards are judged by an independent panel of dairy and conservation experts who consider innovation, scalability and replicability when choosing winners.

The pilot project follows the model of a “milkshed,” which represents the farms and various businesses in a region that furnish dairy foods to customers. The framework is flexible in its design so it can be replicated for projects in other regions, and LASA and its partners are encouraging others to use it, at no cost.

Interest already is growing for similar initiatives, said Lauren Brey, managing director of Farmers for Sustainable Food, a nonprofit organization of food system partners co-founded by Edge. Brey said one of the projects is with an individual farm and on-site cheese plant in Wisconsin, one is with another farmer-led conservation group in the state and one is with a dairy processor in South Dakota.

“Customers want assurances that the food they buy is being produced in a way that’s sensitive to the environment,” Brey said. “Demonstrating this starts at the farm but also has implications for businesses throughout the dairy supply chain.”

The Nature Conservancy, which closely supports farmer-led conservation projects in Wisconsin, helped author the framework.

“The work that LASA farmers have been doing since 2017 to implement soil health practices and track their outcomes shows that agriculture can be part of the solution to some of our biggest challenges, from water quality to climate change,” said Steve Richter, agriculture strategies director for The Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin. “Through this pilot project, they are building on those efforts to leverage their learning beyond their county to the rest of the state. We’re excited to support this collaborative effort to give more farmers the tools they need to protect our waters, capture carbon and keep their farms profitable.”

Brey expects that the results from the first year of the pilot project in 2020 will be released this month.