BY JOSH DAVISNorth Country This Week

MADRID – A St. Lawrence County dairy farm has received over $450,000 from New York State to help protect local soil and water quality and reduce the use of fossil fuel.

Madrid’s Mapleview Dairy, in cooperation with the St. Lawrence County Soil and Water Conservation district, has received $457,056  through New York state’s Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation Enhanced Nutrient and Methane Management Program (CAFO ENMP), which helps implement projects that enhance manure management systems and conserve manure nutrients applied to fields to protect water quality.

David Fisher, New York Farm Bureau President and Mapleview Dairy owner said that the grant will help the farm install new manure application equipment that uses electric pumps to deliver manure from Mapleview’s lagoon to its fields.  

Mapleview Dairy is located on Jones Road in the town of Madrid and has been operated by the Fisher family since 1946.

The farm milks roughly 3,200  cows and manages 5,000 acres of cropland.

Fisher said that the new manure management system  will use GPS technology to guide the equipment in the field autonomously. 

A press release from the New York State Department of Agriculture reported that the project will  continuously apply dairy manure on 641 acres of cropland and use real-time nutrient monitoring to enhance uptake.

Fisher added that flow meters and nutrient sensors in the manure line will apply precise  amounts of nutrients to meet ideal parameters.

Further, the system will automatically  apply smaller amounts of manure in multiple applications, meeting the nutrient needs of growing crops throughout the season.

Manure contains all 17 essential nutrients for plant growth and is a key to building soil health by providing organic matter and enhancing the soil ecosystem. Properly managed, use of manure can offset the need for purchased fertilizer, reducing the amount of imported nutrients onto farms and into a watershed.

Fisher said that the introduction of GPS technology will also reduce the use of fossil fuel and lessen labor requirements.

New York state funded a total of 22 projects through the CAFO ENMP program, with roughly $15.8 million awarded statewide.