Journal of Soil and Water Conservation features Winrock economist Jon Winsten
An article by Jon Winsten, an agricultural and environmental economist with Winrock International’s Ecosystem Services team, was published in the March/April 2024 issue of the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation.
The article, “Low-overhead dairy grazing: A specific solution to a vexing problem,” describes how low-overhead dairy grazing can help producers achieve competitive profitability without exacerbating water quality and climate change problems by having their land in permanent vegetative cover.
“The low-overhead dairy grazing system described here is an adaptation of the New Zealand dairy grazing system, but modified to work across the U.S. Dairy Belt,” Winsten writes. “This system is characterized by (1) maximum nutrient intake from grazed pasture, (2) a high-through put milking system that can efficiently accommodate a herd of at least 200 to 300 cows, and (3) the minimum necessary investment in buildings and machinery. Farms with this system should be able to greatly reduce both variable and fixed (overhead) costs of production and be profitable over a much wider set of milk and feed prices than traditional or large modern confinement dairy farms.”
To read the full article, click here.