EVALUATING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF ORGANIC DAIRY FACILITIES USING LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT TOOLS

This work aims to build upon an existing farm scale LCA model for organic dairies to evaluate sustainability metrics that can be used to guide on-farm practice implementation targeting reductions in environmental impacts related to global warming potential (greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration), ammonia emissions, resource depletion (energy, land, and water use), and eutrophication (nutrient losses).Specific objectives include:Expand existing regional LCA models of organic dairy farms to cover the continental US for the environmental impacts of global warming potential (greenhouse gas emission and carbon sequestration), ammonia emissions, resource depletion (energy, land, and water use), and eutrophication (nutrient losses). Currently models have been developed for the Midwest/Great Lakes, New England, California, and Pacific Northwest regions. This work aims to develop additional regional LCA models using the developed framework for the Northeast, Mideast, Southwest, and Mountain regions to ensure all locations in the continental US have representative models to provide environmental impact data for all representative organic dairy systems.Assess environmental impacts of specific management practices in all US regions using the developed LCA modeling tools. This includes the identification and development of key variables that may be different for organic farms than previously modeled conventional farms (e.g., feed efficiency, replacement rate, diet composition) not currently available in the literature.Evaluate LCA methods to quantify environmental impact estimations, specifically enteric methane predictive equations, nitrous oxide emission factors from manure in pastures, allocation strategies, and methodologies for calculating the global warming potential of methane as they are important to the total estimations for greenhouse gas emissions from organic dairy farms.Develop extension materials and coordinate outreach activities. This includes developing fact sheets and other materials for each region. Researchers will also work with industry stakeholders to increase practice implementation and therefore environmental outcomes.