# Presentation: 825887

## Dairying and Land Use

- 24 January 2002
- Enhanced Nutrient Management on Dairy Farms Seminar Series

**Notes:**
Involved with land use planning/negotiation as result of leading UWEX group meetings for lacal government & earlier ambitious plan to provide web-based guide

## Scale and Nutrients

- Problem must be studied at range of scales
- rumen, cow, barn & storage, farm
- neighborhood, township, watershed
- county, state
- Ecological systems theory suggests different constraints operate at different scales

## Does Some Scale Dominate?

- All are coupled, but to varying degrees
- R & O at sub-cow to farm scale
- Evidence that this can/will solve the problem?
- Rules and permitting at state & federal level
- See above
- Township scale certainly is interesting...

## Township Scale

- Town is the governmental entity, township is surveyor’s construct
- Nominally 6mi x 6mi
- Relevant to nutrient management because:
- Length scale about what a farmer can/will haul manure
- Towns have power to regulate land uses

## Land Use Planning

- WI is a patchwork quilt of land use planning
- Municipalities, Towns, and Counties
- Smart Growth Law
- Incentives for levels of government to collaboratively plan
- Zoning must be consistent with plans in future

## Ag As Local Gov’t Issue

- New non-farm rural complaints
- Concern that farms becoming too big to manage manure appropriately
- Some large enough to require CAFO permit
- New farms may be financed by outsiders
- Few, large farms means few farmers must control majority of land
- New workforce is attracted

## Model Livestock Ordinance

- Developed by (allegedly) diverse committee
- Should be rolled-out next month
- Easiest way for local government to address problem
- But by avoiding public visioning & planning steps lacks local ownership

## State-Level Policy

- Last Fall 2 sides of CAFO debate were talking legislation
- Dairy Business Association wished to reduce local veto power over large farms
- Env & Family Farm folks wished to shape state policy to prevent largest farms

## Nutrient Balances at Town Scale

- Legal power, appropriate scale, office holders close to many issues
- Data are not readily available
- Doug J-S has worked to generate town-level estimates of ag activity
- Derived from WiDoR tax records, WISCLAND analysis of land use, Wi Ag Statistics Service data, and CAFO permits
- Heather Saam now on the case

## Nutrient Flow Model

- CELLO nutrient model
- For any geographic area:
- takes data typical of county WASS values,
- and estimates nutrients flows
- Makes an appalling number of assumptions
- Separate aggregate statistics
- Feeding and cropping strategies

## Slide 11

## Slide 12

## Slide 13

## Slide 14

## Slide 15

## Why do P balances differ?

| Town | A | B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| P balance (#/acre) | +40 | +11 |
| Crop area (ac) | 11830 | 11764 |
| Dairy cows | 2761 | 2792 |
| Hogs & Pigs | 1040 | 80 |
| Alfalfa (ac) | 9070 | 4470 |
| Hay (ac) | 1030 | 1420 |
| Grain corn (ac) | 1010 | 3110 |
| Silage corn (ac) | 230 | 1190 |
| Soybean (ac) | 370 | 1000 |

## Slide 17

## Earlier Wisconsin P Balances

- Larry Bundy, 1994 and 1998, for DNR and DATCP
- Statewide
- Change in Soil Stored = (Manure + Fert) - (Crop removal + Runoff)
- In 1995, estimated a 7.5 #P2O5/acre excess
- Matched well with observed soil test trends

## Earlier Wisconsin P Balances-2

- USDA-NRCS study (2000):
- “Manure Nutrients Relative to the Capacity of Cropland and Pastureland to Assimilate Nutrients:Spatial and Temporal Trends for the United States”
- Census of Ag farm level data (lucky folks!)
- Manure recoverability factors and liberal assimilative capacity estimates

## USDA-NRCS study (continued)

- Calculated two flavors:
- On-Farm: assumed no sharing with neighbors
- County-Wide: assumed willingness to ship manure where needed in county
- Calculated ratio of available manure nutrients to assimilative capacity

## Slide 21

## Conclusions

- Town-CELLO analysis indicates typically 20 + #P2O5/acre annual imbalances, higher than earlier estimates
- Fertilizer assumptions do not permit drawdown, but statewide application is below reported sales
- Crediting reduces excess but not completely

## Conclusions

- Analysis for future permitting of livestock should include all sources and sinks in vicinity
- Access to more data on fertilizer and feed sales would help analysis of efforts to improve water quality

## Conclusions - 3

- Towns & counties should not be constrained in their efforts to arrive at unique place-specific solutions to the challenges of consolidation in and oversight of livestock production.