Ron Maynard saw it as a business decision when he switched feed for his 150 milkers from barley to corn dried distillers grain.
The same went for his decision to increase manure spreading operations to three or four times a year from two.
The Prince Edward Island dairy producer was trying to make his operation more efficient, but the decisions also ended up having an environmental payback.
“I wanted to increase production on my fields by adding nutrients more often,” he told a conference on the dairy industry and greenhouse gases organized in Ottawa March 16-17 by the International Dairy Federation.
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It turned out the switch in feed reduced methane emissions by 86 tonnes each year, while the more frequent manure spreading reduced emissions from the storage lagoon by 100 tonnes.
Maynard is not eligible for the $15 per tonne cap-and-trade price that Alberta has placed on a tonne of carbon equivalent emissions, but he said that type of system would have added $1,800 to his bottom line.
It is not a lot of money in a $1.2 million operation but is better than nothing, he added.
Maynard said it also shows that for the dairy industry, good business decisions are good environmental decisions.
“Every time there is a release of these gases (methane and nitrous oxide) into the atmosphere from my farm, that’s money out of my pocket,” he told the conference.
“The only input I don’t pay for on my farm is oxygen and the rest I buy. Methane is being released every day, but I buy propane to heat my water. There’s something wrong with this picture.”
Maynard’s story personalized a general theme of the conference – agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and will be expected to contribute its share to global efforts to reduce global warming.
As well, individual farmers can get involved by making on-farm investment decisions that make their operations more productive and energy efficient.
Maynard said Canadian dairy industry greenhouse gas emissions fell 25 percent between 1981 and 2006.
“We’ve done this through productivity gains.”
Don Jarvis, president of the Dairy Processors Association of Canada, told the meeting the Canadian dairy industry must develop a national plan “to deal with the carbon footprint.”
He said the industry should not wait for leadership from governments.
“You can wait for institutions or other organizations to produce an action plan but the key to sustainability is individual actions,” he said.
“The Canadian industry is well-positioned to manage this particular issue.”
Richard Doyle, executive director of Dairy Farmers of Canada, agreed.
“It would be a mistake to say we don’t know enough to go ahead because we’ll never know enough.”
There is a danger Canada could lose a competitive advantage to other countries if the industry moves too slowly.
“We already have done a lot,” Doyle said. “We didn’t do it in an environmental context. We did it in a business context, but it served both.”
He said the milk collection system in Canada is now much more centralized, efficient and less polluting with fewer trucks on the road.
Dairy Farmers of Canada officials said they will work on the outline of a national strategy that can be unveiled and debated at the organization’s annual meeting in Halifax in July.
Ontario dairy leader Bruce Saunders told the conference part of the industry strategy should be to let the public know what environmental progress the industry is making.
“Communications on this issue really hasn’t been on our radar screen,” he said.
“We should be letting people know what we have been doing.”
He said part of that progress in-cludes the 25 percent reduction in carbon-equivalent emissions in the past 25 years.
“We have a story to tell.”
douard Clément, who is involved in a two-year “life cycle analysis” to determine the dairy industry’s environmental impact, said emissions from creating one litre of milk for sale in stores creates emissions equal to driving a car for 10 kilometres.
