Dairy Soil & Water Regeneration Highlighted at North American Manure Expo

Members of the Dairy Soil & Water Regeneration (DSWR) research team attended the North American Manure Expo in Auburn, New York, to share preliminary findings, connect with Cornell University researchers and participating farmers, review study plots and gain insights into project progress.

At the event, Victor Green, director of soil health and crop sustainability at Dairy Management Inc., delivered a comprehensive presentation on the project. He detailed how DSWR addresses research gaps in dairy feed production and shared a glimpse into the preliminary results from the project’s soil health baseline survey and ongoing plot studies.

Juan Carlos Ramos Tanchez, on-farm coordinator at Cornell University’s Nutrient Management Spear Program (NMSP), shared insights from Cornell’s value of manure studies, related to the nitrogen replacement research within DSWR. He explained how manure nutrient crediting can offset the need for commercial fertilizers. In collaboration, Gurpreet Kaur, a Ph.D. student with NMSP, discussed the effects of manure application history on soil health indicators and microbial activity.

Jasdeep Singh, postdoctoral researcher with the NMSP team, exhibited a poster on preliminary DSWR results, focusing on the short-term impact of manure-based products on soil health, greenhouse gas emissions and corn silage yield. His poster compared results between plots applying no nitrogen (control), liquid dairy manure, evaporative solids and flocculated solids, highlighting differences, if any, across commonly used field practices and soil health management systems.

Helen Solecki, a Cornell team field and research technician, also displayed a poster featuring preliminary DSWR results. The poster compared effects on corn silage yield and greenhouse gas emissions of commonly used field practices — full width tillage, liquid dairy manure and a broadcasted wheat cover crop — versus soil health management systems using no-till, composted dairy manure solids and a drilled cereal rye cover crop.

Erick Ariel Amaya Aguilar, laboratory and research technician for NMSP, secured first place in the Manure Expo poster session for his presentation on Cornell’s soil incubation study. This research, inspired by DSWR, examines the impact of various manure sources on nitrous oxide emissions and soil nitrogen dynamics under moist and saturated field conditions.

When visiting study plots, western New York dairy farmer Rob Noble touched on how the project goals align with his own farm’s objectives, noting, “We are trying to get better at what we do and part of it is utilizing our resources, being the manure from the cows, and trying to cut down on as much leaching of the nutrients as possible, so I think this project is paramount.”

Similarly, participating central New York farmer Andy Miller emphasized the project’s value. “The involvement in this project is important because it gives us the opportunity to see first-hand what is available and what options there are because we’re always looking to improve our farming practices and take care of the environment.”

Photo caption: the DSWR team meets on a New York field site; team members include (from left): Vic Green, Andy Miller, Bert Bock, Jasdeep Singh, Thayer Tomlinson. Photo courtesy of Corrine Brown.