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UNH Receives $380,000 Grant to Study Organic Dairy as Closed Ecosystem

Higher fuel prices means more than taking a beating at the pump—it also affects the prices of the foodstuffs you buy. From Brazilian bananas to Moroccan couscous, the price of food is directly related to the energy it takes to cultivate, harvest and transport it.

In an attempt to cut out unneeded costs and pollution, the University of New Hampshire is exploring energy independence with a large grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education (SARE) program.

The $380,000 grant is intended to help discover whether a closed agroecosystem approach to organic dairy farming can help struggling dairy farmers stay in business and keep profits up.

“In a closed system, the only thing leaving the farm is the milk,” says John Aber, professor of natural resources at UNH and the principal investigator on the grant. “The goal is to see whether we can have a closed-nutrient-cycle and energy-independent organic dairy.”

Examples of operating a closed system dairy farm include using cow manure fertilizer in the fields on which the herd grazes and placing sawdust from woodlands on UNH’s 300-acre farm in barns for animal bedding (which is becoming increasingly expensive). Woodland resources could provide fuel for small cogeneration plants. Methane digestion could produce usable methane from manure.

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Students in a horticultural technology class at the University of New Hampshire’s Thompson School for Applied Science completed a final project for last week’s Earth Day celebration that brings learning outside of the conventional classroom.

Associate professor Dana Sansom’s grounds management course installed sustainable landscaping around the university’s Putnam Hall, designed to provide low-maintenance beauty throughout the year. Additionally, the landscaped area will be used as a living classroom for the school’s future horticulture students.

Thompson School student Jim Lynn, who designed the landscape with students Henry Hess and Katie Leipold worked with nine other students over the course of the past year to develop and implement the project. The site, which had been largely neglected for a decade, was overgrown and unkempt. Read the rest of this entry »