Getting a Farmer's Attention

Many nutrient management, water quality, and general environmentally minded folks get frustrated at times that farmers aren’t as engaged in these issues as they would like or don’t implement changes on the farm at the pace they would like.  Why is that?  Well, it boils down to what is your priority.  If you work in the environmental field and live and breathe water quality and air quality all day you begin to believe that it is the most important thing, which rightly you should.  If environmental quality is your field it makes sense that air and water quality are top priorities for you and you may tend to assume that they should be for others. 

Farmers, on the other hand, do care about water and air quality and other environmental concerns, but that is not their entire job so it is not their priority issue.  Farmers actually have very complicated jobs with a lot of things pulling them in many different directions.  Farmers are raising, large numbers of animals.  Even a 40-cow dairy, which is small in the dairy world, is a daunting task when you think about actually taking care of 40 animals plus the 20 calves and heifers that would also be on that farm.  I work in the dairy industry and I know I would be overwhelmed with all they have to deal with.  Cows get sick and need to be treated, maybe they need help calving, they need extra care and attention after calving even if everything went well, they need to be fed multiple times a day, they need to have access to water, they need to be milked at least twice a day, their housing and stalls need to be maintained daily so that they are comfortable, and the list could go on and on.

 Just dealing with the needs of the cows is a lot of work, but farmers also need to provide food for these animals, and in many cases that means growing the corn, soybeans, and hay that will be fed to the cows.  Good quality feed is necessary to have high levels of milk production, which is necessary for a farm to make money and continue in the business.  That means fields need to be planted and fertilized in a timely manner, hay needs to be chopped multiple times throughout the year and timed so that it has time to dry before getting rained on, and crops need to be harvested a precise times and stored properly  so that there is little loss of this precious feed through the year.

All of these animal care and feed production activities take a lot of time and deserve the attention of the farmer.  These are, and should be, their priorities if they want to remain in the dairy business.  Although many farmers do care a great deal about the environment it just doesn’t make it to the top of the priority list very often.  Therefore, for someone working in the environmental field to gain the attention of the farmer and get them to really implement a strategy on their farm you need to show them how it will impact their bottom line and/or improve the health of their animals or the quality of the feeds they are growing.  If it doesn’t benefit the dairy operation in some way it will never reach the top of the priority list even though it is on the list.