A new direction?
Dairy association teams up with environmental groups
Three Wisconsin environmental groups and the Dairy Business Association (DBA), which represents some of the state’s largest dairies, announced a partnership last week Tuesday to steer the state’s conservation programs in a new direction. “The challenges facing our drinking water and farming community demand innovative solutions,” said Mark Redsten, president and CEO of Clean Wisconsin, one of the environmental groups. “We’re working together because it’s time we rethink how we protect our water while supporting our farmers.”
Other environmental groups in the partnership include The Nature Conservancy and Wisconsin Land and Water.
Spokespeople for the new alliance did not present any detailed legislative agenda, but indicated that, as a twoyear conversation between the groups continues, they will likely try to include various provisions into the next state budget.
Without being specific, the partnership announced four “guiding principles” that the members agree on. These include “making more effective” the state’s Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) program by requiring some farms under 1,000 Animal Units (700 cows) to obtain state discharge permits, but also streamlining regulations and better staffing the DNR that runs the program. The partnership also wants to revisit the state’s 20-year-old program to deal with agricultural run-off (non-point pollution) that members agree has proven ineffective to clean up rivers, lakes and streams.
The partnership said that while they want to see cleaner wells, rivers and lakes in Wisconsin, they don’t want to further burden farmers during an economic crunch due to low commodity prices.
Tom Crave, DBA president, said the conversation between his organization and the environmental groups started two years ago when the newly elected Gov. Tony Evers announced that 2019 would be the Year of Water in Wisconsin.
He said that dairy farmers needed to be part of the dialogue when it comes to water quality. “We didn’t want to be on the outside looking in,” he said.
Crave said his organization wants greater state support for farmer-led watershed groups that are currently tackling clean water problems.
“We all value clean water and we all want economically and environmentally resilient farms,” he said. “Farmers are problem-solvers, and every day we are seeing more and more innovative conservation practices that protect and improve water quality around the state.”
Crave said “significant investment” will be needed to accelerate progress on the water quality front. “It’s time for a change,” he said.
Scott Laeser, a land and water program director for Clean Wisconsin, said the new alliance was not the state’s environmental groups joining with DBA to impose new regulations on small dairy farmers, but, instead, to recognize that the state’s clean water programs are, together, “frustrating and disappointing,” and to figure out a brand new approach.
He said the state’s CAFO program was ill-staffed and burdened by red tape, while the Wisconsin non-point program had poor participation with only between 35 and 40 percent of farmers statewide filing Nutrient Management plans. Laeser said the state needed to dedicate more money to give farmers technical expertise to address water quality programs.
“This is not going to be easy or cheap,” he said. “But we haven’t come up with a price tag yet.”
Laeser said other Midwestern states, such as Ohio and Minnesota, were spending more money on agricultural pollution and conservation programs.
“This is an opportunity to put aside differences and get to some common ground,” he said. “We’ve been tinker- ing around the margins. It’s time to take a different approach to these issues and make some fundamental changes.”
