This project, funded by the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, intends to highlight the current body of scientific knowledge on potential environmental benefits offered by biochar-based opportunities for dairy farm operations and tackling important on-farm manure related challenges including GHG emissions, water quality and resource-use issues, while enabling dairy farmers to garner soil carbon sequestration and several other soil health benefits for regenerative crop production.
The project focuses on the use of biochar in dairy operations as a feed additive, for bedding material and for various manure management strategies. This will help educate dairy farmers, manure management businesses, extension agents and others about the availability of promising biochar-based sustainable practices to adopt at the farm-level for meeting several environmental stewardship goals and potentially to open-up additional economic opportunities for dairy farmers in currently evolving carbon removal marketplace initiatives and new NRCS standards such as CPS 808 . The identified knowledge gaps by this report could help to catalyze research in the scientific community and stresses the need for public and private support to conduct demonstration projects for understanding the techno-economic feasibility and industry-upscaling opportunities of biochar-based practices.
We undertook (and will continue to undertake) three main tasks: (1) develop educational materials; (2) host educational workshops for dairies, manure management companies, researchers as well as extension agents; and (3) develop proposals for biochar projects on NYS dairy farms.
- Educational materials – the state of knowledge report summarizes peer reviewed literature focusing on the use of biochar in dairy operations. The report includes biochar use as a feed additive, for bedding material, as a manure management strategy, and as a means to address environmental issues related to dairy manure. A survey of existing demonstrations of biochar use on dairies is included. See the full report here: The Potential for Biochar to Enhance Sustainability in the Dairy Industry
- Biochar & Dairy workshop – We presented biochar technology at the 2019 Empire Farm Days, and we had planned a demonstration at the 2020 Empire farm days which was cancelled due to COVID-19 (we will try to be there in 2021). In addition, we hosted a webinar through Cornell’s ProDairy in March 2020. You can find slides from that webinar here: Biochar Webinar_Pro-DAIRY. A webinar on this topic is planned in collaboration with the International Biochar Initiative’s biochar webinar series. We also plan to help organize the NY Biochar Workshop at the Rochester Institute of Technology (postponed until further notice due to COVID-19).
- In order to attract funding for NYS dairy demonstration projects, a series of proposed projects and potential funders is being developed. This will include projects that address NY State’s proposed methane reduction plan and water quality issues related to dairy effluents and manure management.
