The Project

Partners include: Wisconsin's Milk Marketing Board, Federation of Cooperatives, and Farm Bureau Federation, Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin, the Milk and Dairy Beef Quality Assurance Center, Wisconsin Departments of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, and of Natural Resources, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension Service, Nutrient and Pest Management Program, and Farm*A*Syst.

Wisconsin's pilot project will evaluate the effectiveness of a dairy environmental management system. Management system assessments support voluntary actions to reduce environmental risks and improve compliance with existing regulations. The project will collaborate with the state-wide Wisconsin Agricultural Stewardship Initiative and its Discovery and Pioneer Farms on which intensive environmental monitoring is being established.

Updates

Final Summary - December 2005:

View the Final Report Summary.

March 2004

View the Summary Interim Project Report.

Summer 2003

The Wisconsin pilot project is currently working with three dairy farmers eager to write their own EMSs, and is also working with two university research farms in developing EMSs. Wisconsin's Dairy Business Association has been supportive and has promoted EMS to its members. The pilot team has also had support from an insurance agent in the state that has taken the general 12 page EMS booklet and developed an EMS framework for its clientele of manure haulers and dairy operations. The insurance agent has designed the EMS requirements such that operations following the guidelines are eligible for a premium reduction in their insurance up to a 35% reduction for dairies. So far, six manure haulers are following the EMS guidelines to gain premium reductions from several different insurance companies.

The Wisconsin EMS Guidebook is nearing completion and is being pilot tested by the farmers developing EMSs for their operations. The team has also produced online manure storage regulatory reviews to assist farmers in determining what regulations apply to them. The regulatory review checklists will be incorporated into the Wisconsin EMS online assessment tool by September (www.uwex.edu/AgEMS/dairy/wisems). Also in the works is an online module to assess dairy pest management risks (funded by the Foundation for IPM Education). The team will continue to work with farm managers in developing dairy EMSs, and will also reconvene a stakeholders' group in the fall.

January 2003:

The Wisconsin team continues to build relationships with stakeholders from a variety of dairy industry representatives; farmers, insurance companies, environmental industry, university staff, agribusiness associations, and state and federal agencies. We held our second meeting on December 9 in Madison where around 30 interested people attended. The enthusiasm from this group was incredible!

The Wisconsin team met with the agricultural research station manager at Arlington, to test our EMS guidebook and to help this research station develop an EMS. Progress is continuing on the EMS software package; improvements are being made all the time, and we will demonstrate the software at the Denver meeting.

November 2002

The stakeholder's workshop for EMS in Wisconsin Dairy was held Sept. 25th. More than 50 individuals representing producers, dairy organizations and industry, environmental groups, state and federal agencies attended. Feedback was quite positive, and we are now working on continuing our work with a core group. An EMS for the Marshfield agricultural research station is nearly complete.

September 2002

The Wisconsin EMS team recently met with a cooperating county agent to talk about needs for EMS training education, as well as how some agents might proceed with completing EMSs. Farmers that this agent worked with were very interested in what they were REQUIRED to do (by way of regulations), then were willing to think about what above and beyond they ought to do. We are also working on getting the regulatory reviews into the computer-based format and beefing up the on-line assessments with additional links to information. Our team of programmers is making progress with multi-worksheet action plans and the anonymous log in process. A stakeholder's workshop for EMS in Wisconsin Dairy will be held Sept. 25th.

The Wisconsin project will do a pre-pilot assessment on a limited number of farms and will update tools based on the evaluation of the pre-pilot. The assessments, and subsequent other EMS tools, will utilize an on-line prototype toolkit under development. The project plans to pilot EMS on a research farm, and eventually to pilot a full EMS with a limited number of private farms (3-5). Projected date to be on farms: April 1, 2002.

© 2006 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.