DBA stands up for dairy farmers at EPA listening session

Two Dairy Business Association representatives took the opportunity to deliver comments at a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listening session on Nov. 15 in Eau Claire.

The four-hour session, organized by several environmental groups and a Madison law firm, brought out more than 150 people, many of whom appealed to EPA officials for water protections.

Nicole Barlass, DBA’s director of member relations, and Jamie Mara, director of public relations, made remarks covering the importance of the dairy community to Wisconsin, misinformation about large farms, farmer-led watershed initiatives, and unnecessary regulations.

Here are their comments:

NICOLE BARLASS

Good evening My name is Nicole Barlass and I work for the Dairy Business Association, representing hundreds of dairy farm families across the state of Wisconsin.

As a dairy farmer myself, mother of two small children, a former agriculture educator and past spokesperson for Wisconsin agriculture, I can assure you that our dairy farms work hard every day to protect and conserve the land and water that our farms, cows and families depend on.

We need to remember that our farmers are not bad people. We are not villains trying to pollute and hurt Wisconsin’s beautiful landscape and communities. After all, we want this beautiful resource to be available for years and years to come by our future generations. I want my kids to be able to farm and care for the land, just as my entire family has been afforded for decades.

What you must know is that modern dairies across the state are critical to the well-being of our cherished rural Wisconsin communities. Farms of all sizes provide jobs, they keep rural business thriving such as feed cooperatives, veterinarians, banks, hardware stores and more.  These farms help contribute to the tax base that is vital to maintaining our local schools and roads. Our farms are not the villains.

On a regulatory matter, after years of encouraging farmers to spend millions of dollars to build vegetated treatment areas (VTAs) on farms, the Wisconsin DNR is now pushing farmers to abandon the practice and start collecting vast quantities of rainwater from feed pads and calf hutch areas. The DNR claims that these changes came from the directive of EPA.

In addition to having limited and incomplete research to prove that collection from these areas would have a positive effect on our environment, these changes would cost farmers millions of dollars to build additional storage. Dollars that they simply do not have!

Additionally, what you are asking will have a negative impact in that farmers would have to spread additional liquid manure and wastewater on fields. We are already required to spread in such a short seasonal window that drastic increases in the volume of wastewater from these unnecessary areas would only increase the chances of runoff events and potentially make them more harmful. Our families do not want a negative runoff event on our shoulders.

I am a farmer, my dad is farmer, my grandpa is a farmer. We must stop attacking people like me and others like my family who work so hard to make our Wisconsin communities so great, produce a wholesome, fresh product and care for our animals and land.

Let’s instead work together and collaborate on sustainability and new technologies that will make us even better. This is a proactive approach to improving what we do instead of adding non-sense regulations that will hinder the farms that make Wisconsin the great place that it is.

JAMIE MARA

Hello. My name is Jamie Mara and I work for the Dairy Business Association, a nonprofit organization of farmers and a host of other businesses and services that make up the dairy community in Wisconsin.

I am here tonight to talk about the progressive efforts by farmers in this state to care for our natural resources. Through an increasing number of farmer-led initiatives, farmers are voluntarily developing aggressive programs to raise the bar on environmental stewardship.

The programs, often organized as nonprofit organizations, promote the current, best-known management practices and identify – through research and demonstration – additional best practices to protect our environment. They provide other farmers with information on what they learn and they help those farmers incorporate the practices.

These initiatives are about results. Members commit to continuous improvement in areas such as surface water and ground water quality. Farmers use scientific methods to measure progress.

In the Madison area, one such group, Yahara Pride Farms, is dramatically reducing the amount of algae-causing phosphorous that reaches the lakes there. In Door and Kewaunee counties, Peninsula Pride Farms is mapping fields to identify shallow soils, leveraging the use of cover crops and creating a collaborative community spirit in tackling decades-old groundwater challenges.

The farmers work with universities and state and federal agencies, such as the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency, to do what is right.

As producers on the land, farmers are very proud of what they do. They’ve always worked on effective solutions that are socially, economically and environmentally sound.

Farmers are inventive and creative, and these programs help them harness and leverage those qualities to adapt and improve.

The programs demonstrate farmers’ collective commitment to protecting and preserving our natural resources.

There is no one answer to clean water; there are a lot of answers. The farmer-led programs strive for continuous improvement. Everyone has a responsibility to care for the environment, and dairy farmers want to make sure they are doing all they can to protect it.

We all share in this responsibility. Farmers play a lead role and they take it seriously. They often go above and beyond regulations to ensure they are doing everything they can to protect our natural resources.

Just as their non-farming neighbors do, farmers need the land, air and water to be safe. Safe for their families, their workers and their animals. And they work diligently to make that happen. We all have the same goal.

There are already numerous state and federal regulations, particularly on large farms, that build environmental protections into the farming practices. For example, book-thick nutrient management plans detail, among other things, when, where and how much manure and other fertilizer can be applied to fields. Water and soil samples are continuously monitored and the farms are inspected.

Although CAFO farmers are the ones most often targeted by people with the greatest concerns about the environment, these large farms are among the most progressive when it comes to stewardship of our natural resources.

Large-scale farmers are willing and able to invest in expensive technology used to minimize their environmental footprint. Anaerobic digesters, water recycling and precision manure application are examples.

These investments of time and money also eventually benefit other farms, large and small, by helping companies perfect the technology and make it more affordable.

It is unfortunate that a lot of misinformation about CAFOs is circulated. Not nearly enough people have seen for themselves how it all works. Plenty of farmers are ready and willing to provide a tour.

Lastly, I would like to say it’s unfortunate that certain outside interests work to create controversy, raise unfounded fears and bring about division in local farm communities throughout Wisconsin.

Fingers are pointed, accusations are made, reputations are ruined, and neighbors are pitted against neighbors.

My hope, and that of our organization, is that farmers be shown respect, and that all sides of these issues be given due consideration.