Day 9: The 3 C's: Cattle, Carbon, Capital

Sosten's food/energy pyramid.

Over the last 5 or 6 days, we learned a whole lot about food production, through a wide variety of lenses, such as chemistry, efficiency, sustainability, vegetables and plants, cows, soil health, and economics, among others. Sosten Lungu, a VTC agronomy professor, drew a food/energy pyramid on the blackboard for us, showing the relationship between soil, plants, cows or other ruminants, and people. Soil, which is made of water, minerals, organic matter, and microbes, supports plants. Plants produce energy. Cows' digest plant energy - bacteria in the rumen break down plant carbohydrates, such as hemicellulose and cellulose, to create milk, sugars, and proteins. This allows people to take in plant energy in a digestible form - through milk or beef. It's important to note that as we move up the pyramid, carbon (energy) is lost to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2). This pyramid clearly showed the importance of maintaining nutrients in soil (through practices like cover cropping and crop rotation), photosynthesis in plants, and careful planning around what types of plants, how often, and how much cows eat.

VTC's vegetable farm, which supplies Sodexo for the
5 Vermont State Colleges. 

At all the farms we've visited so far, whether dairy or vegetable, there's been a focus on healthy soil, and we've heard slightly different variations of the same practices: nutrient management, composting, crop rotation, and cover cropping. At the dairy farms, the focus depended more on the purpose of the cows' milk - artisan cheese and milk vs. commodity milk. At farms like Sweet Rowen and Jasper Hill, where the quality of the milk may be more important than the quality, the scale is on the smaller side (Paul at Sweet Rowen has about 30 cows), and they focus on soil techniques and let the cows graze on high quality pasture and eat high quality hay. On the other hand, dairy farms like Laggis Brothers and the VTC farm produce commodity milk, and thus focus more on efficient cows that produce as much milk as possible. Both these farms were larger scale (Laggis has about 500 cows and VTC has about 200) and feed their cows different combinations of grass, corn, hay, and grain. According to Louise from Sterling, corn gives cows 4 times more energy/bulk than grass, so I assume that partially explains why Laggis and VTC cows (commodity milk) got more corn and grains than Jasper Hill cows (cheese).

I also want to mention other topics we discussed with Dr. Dutton and Sosten over the last two days, to make clear how broad this food systems issue is, and how so many other areas of knowledge are impacted by food and agriculture:

• The incredible importance of carbon in everything!
• The significant role of bacteria in soil--plant--cow--people--soil processes
• The nitrogen cycle
• Balancing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels in soil
• Comparing C-3 (perform well in 46-78 degrees) and C-4 plants (perform well in 85-105 degrees)
• Methane digesters' use of manure and other waste to create methane, which then creates electricity and heat
• The need to control compost to slow down the release of methane into the atmosphere - methane emissions from dairy cattle, per cow per day, increased 175% from 1944 to 2007 (Chase).
• Money in vegetables and animals - how to quantify budgets to cover costs, decide on scale, and figure out the best marketing practices
• Cross-breeding corn and genetically modifying seeds 
• Pros and cons of organic
• And finally, the future of agriculture: local/regional distribution, the role of the information age, the resurgence of small farms, microorganisms as fertilizer replacements, water resources, and consumer interest

Chase, L.E. "Reducing Greenhouse Gases Can also Reduce Feed Costs." Cornell University Dept. of Animal Science. Accessed June 7, 2015.