“Five or 10 years from now, I don’t think we will be milking cows anymore, realistically,' Paul Jereczek, a 35-year-old dairy farmer said.
This year, with $8.8 million in state funding, three UW System schools — Platteville, River Falls and Madison — launched plans for a Dairy Innovation Hub that's expected to create an advanced dairy management academy and improve labs and farms devoted to research.
Wisconsin, Evers says, needs a diverse agricultural base that includes farms of all sizes. The state ranks first in the nation for snap beans, cranberries and ginseng, third in potatoes and fifth in cherries. Already, some of the state's biggest livestock farms are moving into energy production by converting manure into renewable gas.
The average size of a Wisconsin dairy farm is about 150 cows. But that number is rising because the number of CAFOs in the state has jumped 55% in less than a decade to 279 farms. The data will be integrated with information gathered across an entire farmstead, down to the bacteria in soil where cattle feed grows. Farmers will be able to use epigenetics, in which specific livestock genes are turned on or off, to trigger changes in the animal's biology.
In the Netherlands, the world's first floating dairy farm has been launched in an urban area where rising sea levels have made farmland prone to flooding. The three-story raft, with glass sides, is home to 32 cows. Its electricity is generated from floating solar panels and drinking water comes from a rainwater collection system.
The shift to renewable gas, also called biogas, is being driven by federal and state incentives — and in some cases subsidies. Once the methane is pumped into an interstate pipeline, it’s considered a renewable fuel. The company has similar deals with four other farms in Kewaunee and Manitowoc counties and has projects in the works with four more farms, including Rosendale Dairy, the state’s largest dairy farm, in Fond du Lac County.Melissa Hughes, the new executive director of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., said one reason she took the job was to address dairy issues.
But the agency could do more to cultivate the next generation in dairy, said Sarah Lloyd, a dairy farmer from Sauk County and a Wisconsin Farmers Union board member. Zwald has picked up a job managing the UW-River Falls research farm, keeping him involved with livestock. What's been different about the recent downturn has been its duration, five years, and its severity — the highest number of dairy farm losses in Wisconsin, on a percentage basis, going all the way back to the Great Depression.
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