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Friday, March 25, 2022
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Dairy
Organic Valley co-op eyes carbon neutrality
Carbon Insetting
Program incentivizes
climate-smart farming
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
ST. PAUL, Ore. — Organic Val-
ley, the largest organic dairy coop-
erative, is establishing incentives
for climate-smart agricultural prac-
tices at members’ farms.
The co-op has set a goal of
reaching carbon neutrality by
2050.
Rather than achieving that goal
by purchasing carbon offset credits
from elsewhere, the co-op’s new
Carbon Insetting Program aims
to generate carbon savings from
within, directly benefiting local
producers and the communities
they serve.
“I like to think of it as the oppo-
site of carbon offsets,” said Nicole
Rakobitsch, director of sustain-
ability for Organic Valley. “We’re
going to invest in farmer-members
in our supply chain who produce
the milk and other products we put
on (store) shelves.”
The announcement was made
March 11 during a panel of climate
experts, farmers and food brands
at Natural Products Expo West in
Anaheim, Calif. Rakobitsch said
Organic
Valley
expects to be the
first major dairy
brand to reduce
farm
emissions
without relying on
carbon offsets.
Nicole
“We will be
providing a direct Rakobitsch
incentive from the
co-op to the farmer who is install-
ing a new practice,” she said.
Organic Valley represents
approximately 1,700 dairy farm-
ers in 34 states, Canada, Aus-
tralia and the United Kingdom.
That includes about 25 farms in
Oregon.
For the Carbon Insetting Pro-
gram’s first year, Rakobitsch said
Organic Valley hopes to enroll
30-50 new projects.
Eligible practices are broken
down into three categories: energy,
improve manure management and
agroforestry.
Energy projects can include
anything that improves overall effi-
ciency or reduces consumption —
such as installing LED lighting or
upgrading plate coolers for milk.
The category also covers renew-
able energy, such as installing solar
panels, and on-farm electrification,
such as investing in electric trac-
tors and other equipment.
Improving manure manage-
ment specifically refers to tech-
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
Dairy cows at Sar-Ben Farms in St. Paul, Ore. The Organic Valley co-
operative will pay farmers for modifications they make to their op-
erations that reduce their carbon footprint.
National Milk expects a busy year
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
Election years can sometimes be quiet
on Capitol Hill, but leaders of the National
Milk Producers Federation think this year
won’t be one of them.
There’s still a lot of sausage making
that goes on even in an election year, Paul
Bleiburg, NMPF’s senior vice president of
government relations, said.
Congress just passed a $1.5 trillion
spending bill that will support some of
NMPF’s priorities, he said during the latest
“Dairy Defined” podcast.
One relates to National Milk’s climate
and sustainability efforts to become green-
house gas neutral or better by 2050. Part of
soil health, air quality, water qual-
ity and biodiversity.
“Carbon insetting is about so
much more than simply reducing
a company’s carbon footprint,” she
said. “It is about businesses invest-
ing in the ecosystems their sup-
pliers and farmers depend on to
increase their resiliency and pro-
vide significant, measurable ben-
efits to communities surrounding
the value chain.”
Rakobitsch said the co-op is
working with SustainCERT, a
third-party firm, to certify carbon
savings from individual practices.
Though prices continue to fluc-
tuate, Rakobitsch said Organic
Valley is trying to be competitive
with other carbon offset markets
nology that separates liquid and
solid manure typically stored in
open-air lagoons, Rakobitsch said.
The more solids can be removed
and used as fertilizer or in com-
post, the less chance it has to break
down and emit methane, a harmful
greenhouse gas.
Finally, agroforestry is the prac-
tice of planting trees around or
among pastures and cropland to
help sequester carbon. Practically
for dairies, tree plantings could be
done to provide shade for cows, or
as windbreaks for crops.
While the focus of the pro-
gram is to help achieve carbon
neutrality, Rakobitsch said they
come with a suite of environmen-
tal co-benefits, including enhanced
that is reducing enteric emission, which can
represent 30% of a dairy farmer’s green-
house gas profile, he said.
National Milk and other agriculture orga-
nizations have urged FDA to reclassify how
it approves animal feed additives to reduce
enteric emissions from livestock, he said.
“We were able to get new funding as well
as language in this recent bill to provide
direction to FDA to look at how they might
classify these additives as foods rather than
drugs, to expedite their approval, get them
to market more quickly … ,” he said.
In addition, the bill continues funding
for a number of National Milk’s priorities,
including the Farm and Ranch Stress Assis-
tance Network and Dairy Business Innova-
tions Initiatives, he said.
that offer around $15 per metric
ton of carbon.
Enrollment in the Carbon Inset-
ting Program will likely take place
later this summer. As part of the
deal, Rakobitsch said the farm-
ers must agree not to enter any
external carbon offset markets “to
ensure there’s not a double-count-
ing of that same carbon.”
Steve Pierson, Organic Valley
board president and fourth-gener-
ation owner of Sar-Ben Farms in
St. Paul, Ore., said his family oper-
ation will be among the first to
enroll in the program.
Pierson plans to install a new,
more efficient separator to pull
solid manure from the waste gen-
erated by the farm’s 320 dairy
cows. The manure solids can then
be composed and sold as organic
fertilizer.
“This is definitely a more effi-
cient system than what we had,”
Pierson said. “It will reduce up to
20-25% more solids than our old
system did.”
There is no question agricul-
ture contributes greenhouse gases
to the atmosphere, Pierson said,
though he added farmers can and
should be part of the solution.
“Our co-op is trying to do
exactly that, by incentivizing our
farmers to reduce our sources
opportunities for emissions,” he
said.
Risk management a priority
in farm bill negotiations
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
With the 2018 Farm Bill
expiring on Sept. 30, 2023,
the U.S. House Agriculture
Committee has a lot to do to
get up to speed on hearings
and listening sessions.
It’s only had three ses-
sions, compared with 130 at
this point in the process for
the last farm bill. A big part
of the delay has been the
COVID-19 pandemic, said
Rep. Glen “G.T.” Thompson,
R-Pa., ranking member of the
committee.
He would put risk manage-
ment at the top of the prior-
ity list in information-gather-
ing sessions for the next farm
bill, he said during National
Cattlemen’s Beef Associa-
tion’s latest “Beltway Beef”
podcast.
“One of the biggest areas
of growth in the federal crop
insurance program has been
in the livestock area,” he said.
The Bipartisan Budget Act
of 2018 lifted the cap on the
amount of livestock insur-
ance that could be sold. Prior
to that, the government only
insured about $500 million
in liability on livestock poli-
cies. This year alone, the gov-
ernment is going to insure $13
billion, he said.
“We got to make sure all
these risk-management tools
remain available for livestock
producers,” he said.
Members
of Congress
are
going
to need the
NCBA’s help
defending
crop insur-
Rep. Glenn ance because
“G.T.”
there
are
Thompson going to be
voices out
there that do not understand
agriculture. There will no
doubt be amendments that
will try to negatively impact
crop insurance, he said.
“I want to be able to defeat
those motions, amendments
that will be offered in a huge
way,” he said.
One of the areas of the
committee’s pace on farm
bill oversight that frustrates
him most is animal dis-
ease. There’s avian flu in the
Mid-Atlantic states and Afri-
can swine fever in the Domin-
ican Republic.
“Certainly with the spread
of those two, animal health is
— and certainly has to be —
top of mind as we enter into
the next farm bill negotia-
tions,” he said.
He’s proud of the work the
committee did on establishing
the Foot and Mouth Disease
vaccine bank, but it would
be good to have an oversight
hearing on how it’s going and
how prepared the U.S. is for
an outbreak, he said.
He also talked about legis-
lative efforts to provide more
information on cattle markets
and proposals to mandate a
certain amount of negotiated
cash trade in fed cattle.
“As a conservative who
generally believes in free mar-
kets, I’m always in favor of
private industry-led solutions.
… When the government gets
involved, you have to always
be worried about unintended
consequences,” he said.
When the affected indus-
try doesn’t quite agree on the
problem or the extent of the
problem, it becomes even
more difficult to find the solu-
tion by way of a government
program or mandate, he said.
“With a mandate, we’d
probably have more unin-
tended negative consequences
than the positive intended
consequences,” he said.
That’s why he was pleased
to see the industry as a whole
coalesce around the cattle
contract library passed in the
House and included in the
omnibus bill.
“It’s not ‘the’ silver bullet,
but it’s a great tool to put in
the toolbox,” he said.
The committee has
worked well together on
the contract library, a rural
broadband bill and WHIP+
(Wildfire and Hurricane
Indemnity Program Plus)
disaster funding, and has
the capacity to continue to
do great bipartisan work on
behalf of agriculture and
rural America, he said.
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