2023 December Board Book

and expand reach. In 2024, they will continue to coordinate with academic researchers in communicating the latest scientific information related to methane, cows, and climate change. Dairy Cares is the managing co host of the 2024 California Dairy Sustainability Summit to be held March 26 at UC Davis. Industry Benefit: Dairy Cares provides a unique service to California dairy families by communicating key messages regarding sustainability to local, targeted audiences. This service is different from national and international dairy outreach efforts because Dairy Cares serves the specific communications needs of California dairy farm families, while helping them navigate their local sustainability challenges. The coalition itself has successfully saved dairy farmers hundreds of millions of dollars, especially via regulatory environmental compliance. The coalition helped form the Central Valley Dairy Representative Monitoring Program (CVDRMP), which is estimated to save dairy farmers more than $6 million annu ally in direct compliance costs. For more information about Dairy Cares, visit dairycares.com.

2024 – 2025 Environmental Feasibility of DairyMAR

Researcher: Dr. Helen Dahlke, UC Davis Land, Air, and Water Resources 2024 Budget: $126,863; CMAB REQUEST $95,147 (2025 Budget: $176,180) Background: Available water for recharge in 2023 exceeded 21 million acre-feet. Dairies manage about 430,000 acres of cropland and dairies in the Tulare Lake Basin have participated in DairyMAR (managed aquifer recharge on dairy-controlled, manure-managed cropland) to receive credit toward future groundwater pumping. The purpose of this project is to confirm that DairyMAR can be implemented without nega tive impacts to groundwater quality and to provide an initial assessment of the feasibility of DairyMAR under federal and state water quality pro tection constraints. Industry Benefit: This research will further develop a foundational framework for the development of promising DairyMAR practice standards.

A downstream impact of this project will be that the dairy industry could be able to augment the available water resources under the implementation of ground water sustainability plans, leading to relatively larger forage and silage production than would otherwise be possible. This work could establish a foundation for the dairy industry to engage in California’s most promising expansion of water resources available to growers: managed aquifer recharge. This will be the first U.S. project to investigate the groundwater quality impacts from DairyMAR that is from implementation of managed aquifer recharge on croplands managed with dairy manure as the main source of fertilizer. The ultimate economic impact would be the availability of additional water resources, which will lessen the need for land re-purposing of dairy crop acreage to meet water supply constraints in a changing climate and under the implementation of groundwater sustainability plans.