VANDER WOUDE DAIRY

Through intensive management practices we have been able to utilize a wide variety of farming practices that enable us to be better stewards of our water and land resources. We employ strip-till, a conservation practice that employs a minimal tillage outlook by disturbing only that soil set to contain the seed row, on much of our acreage. This allows us to be more efficient with our available water while minimizing our greenhouse gases due to the decreased amount of tractor work required in the fields. While much of our land is irrigated through flood irrigation systems, we have begun to increase our use of drip irrigation on a variety of crops with positive results in terms of our yields and water management. Drip irrigation employs the use of tape or tubing that runs parallel to the seed rows so that water can be directly applied to the plants and, as a result, we have seen a 40% decrease in our water usage per acre in comparison to our flood irrigated fields. One other practice we employ to increase our farm, water, and environmental sustainability is the implementation of a complete tailwater return system. This allows us to collect excess water from our flood irrigated fields and return it into our irrigation water flow so that it can be reused in the next field or check over. Every acre we farm is carefully managed so that its nutrients, water usage, and crops are, respectively, balanced, regulated, and chosen to ensure the sustainability of our entire farming system.