By Jamie Martin
The National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Program launched FARM Environmental Stewardship (ES) Version 3 to help dairy farmers assess sustainability opportunities.
The program uses the latest science and technology to align farming practices with business goals, providing tools for accurate data collection and analysis.
A User Guide was released recently to help farmers understand the evaluation process. It provides detailed information on data inputs, ensuring consistency, and offers a chapter to help interpret the assessment’s outputs, especially in understanding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This helps farmers make informed decisions about their environmental footprint.
Additionally, the FARM Program has launched a self-paced, online evaluator training course. This course, which is required for certification, covers the core elements of the evaluation process.
Advanced training sessions are available for evaluators to deepen their expertise, focusing on data inputs, interpreting results, and using the new scenario analysis function. This function allows farmers to evaluate the impact of potential changes on milk productivity and GHG emissions.
To support these efforts, FARM ES also offers a Prep Guide, helping producers prepare for on-farm evaluations. Both the User Guide and Prep Guide provide expectations and best practices for the evaluation process.
The RuFaS model, which powers the FARM ES Version 3 tool, incorporates cutting-edge research to model whole-farm systems.
By using this model, farmers can identify opportunities for improving farm efficiency and reducing costs. Future updates will include preset options for running what-if scenarios and an economic module for conducting partial-budget analyses.
"The FARM Program continues its mission of fostering a culture of continuous improvement by providing farmers with tools and resources for on-farm best management practices."
For more information on FARM Environmental Stewardship, visit nationaldairyfarm.com.
Photo Credit: national-milk-producers-federation
Categories: National