Location: Dairy Forage Research
Project Number: 5090-31000-027-032-R
Project Type: Reimbursable Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Apr 1, 2024
End Date: Dec 31, 2026
Objective:
Project objectives include:
1. Compare the productivity, profitability, and fossil energy footprint of dairy forage cropping systems that vary in input intensity, perenniality, and crop diversity.
2. Conduct intensive greenhouse gas, soil carbon accumulation, and biomass measurements to evaluate the carbon balance of the selected systems and make these data available for further development and improvement of the Integrated Farm Systems Model (IFSM; Rotz et al., 2022; Rotz et al., 2021) and the Ruminant Farm System Model (RuFaS; Hansen et al., 2021).
3. Use the IFSM to predict how implementation of the cropping systems would affect farm carbon balance and other sustainability outcomes.
4. Engage producers, consultants, and educators in the research project through a combination of field days, presentations at producer and industry events, and development of extension videos and printed materials.
Approach:
The cropping systems experiment will be implemented at the Prairie du Sac Agricultural Research Station in Wisconsin, USA, in a location that was planted with corn grain in 2022. The experiment will be replicated in a staggered start for three consecutive growing seasons. We will evaluate six dairy forage cropping systems which vary in system perenniality, crop diversity, and input intensity: 1. Continuous corn silage (CCS ); 2. CCS + interseeded cover crops (CC); 3. CCS + fall CC; 4. Winter wheat followed by CC mix (year 1), corn silage (year 2), and soybeans (year 3); 5. Alfalfa; 6. Intermediate wheatgrass grown for forage and other grain.
Meteorological measurements will include daily precipitation, air temperature, relative humidity, and solar radiation during three growing seasons, using a meteorological station already in place at the experimental location. Soil health measurements will include wet aggregate stability, soil texture, total carbon and total nitrogen, soil organic carbon, permanganate-oxidizable carbon, and soil bulk density. Routine soil analyses (pH, K, P, and organic matter) and soil ammonium-N and nitrate-N will be collected annually beginning with the fall prior to the first growing season until the termination year. Field greenhouse gas emissions will include N2O, CO2, and CH4, and will be collected using the static chamber method with two chambers per plot (within and between rows) to capture intra-plot variability.
The Integrated Farm System Model (IFSM) will be used to quantify key sustainability outcomes associated with the cropping systems. These outcomes include fossil energy footprint, carbon balance, productivity, and profitability. Data collected during the field experiment will be used to calibrate IFSM to the specific conditions of the experiments. The model will be used to simulate the various cropping systems in full dairy production systems to determine their effect on the carbon footprint and other environmental impacts of the milk produced. Important production costs of the cropping systems will be compared to incomes from feed, milk, and animal sales to measure effects on farm net returns.
