Sustainability initiative draws national attention

By Jamie Mara, director of strategic communications

A project in southwestern Wisconsin spearheaded by DBA members and partners has earned national praise.

The 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 many 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 handbook to help farmers determine what conservation practices are most useful for their individual farms and document the environmental and financial effects. The first-of-its-kind framework is being used in a pilot project involving a dozen LASA farms.

LASA President Jim Winn, a DBA member whose dairy is involved in the project, said his 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.”

True success in sustainability lies in involvement throughout the supply chain, said Greg Siegenthaler, vice president of milk marketing and supply chain at Grande and a DBA board member.

“In order to really move the needle and see ongoing success around sustainability, we must continue to engage all partners in the process,” Siegenthaler said.
The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy 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.

“Customers want assurances that the food they buy is being produced in a way that’s sensitive to the environment,” said Lauren Brey, managing director of Farmers for Sustainable Food, a nonprofit organization of food system partners co-founded by DBA. “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 the state, 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.

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