The Dairy Innovation Hub advisory council held its summer meeting at the Marshfield Agricultural Research Station.
The morning meeting included updates from council members, campuses, and Hub administration. Several discussion items filled the agenda, including the timeline for recruiting a new faculty director.
Heather White, faculty director of the Hub since 2019, will step down from the director role. She’ll be serving as associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW–Madison.
“I am committed to helping transition the Hub to a new faculty director and am eager to see what a fresh perspective can bring,” says White. She’s also a professor in the Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences at UW-Madison.
After the meeting, the group transitioned to a series of farm tours highlighting Hub equipment investments, research, and partnerships. This included demonstrations on heat stress, methane emissions, computer vision, and machine learning. They also compared heifers in pasture and traditional systems and saw an ongoing paired watershed experiment.
“The Dairy Innovation Hub has significantly impacted research capabilities at the MARS station. Hub-funded research, equipment, students, and scientists are keeping the farm busy,” said Nancy Esser, MARS superintendent. “Ultimately, this pays off for farmers, stakeholders, and local leaders engaged in the dairy community.”
The MARS station is in an area of Wisconsin with the highest concentration of dairy farms. The station is home to one of the nation’s premier dairy heifer research facilities and operates 955 acres of land providing support for faculty, researchers, and students.
The council invited area farmers, local legislators, and key agriculture organizations to attend the tours.
Paul Lippert, a dairy farmer from Pittsville, attended the tour representing the Professional Dairy Producers board of directors.
“The research I saw during the tour funded by the Dairy Innovation Hub has a future on the farm. I found the research on grazing heifers, involving two full summers of grazing with very little supplementation, to be very important and I hope to use the findings soon on our dairy,” said Lippert.
Lippert owns Grass Ridge Farm, LLC with his father, Matt, and brother, Carl. The dairy is home to 700 registered Holsteins and Jerseys as well as 600 youngstock. He graduated from UW–River Falls with a Dairy Science degree.
“The research on computer vision is also exciting because it will allow us to do a better job of managing cows as individuals AND as groups in the future. Technology that lets us monitor cows day-to-day could reap huge benefits in how we manage our dairy,” said Lippert.
The Dairy Innovation Hub, is supported by a $7.8M annual state investment to drive research and development across the UW–Madison, UW–Platteville, and UW–River Falls campuses. In just five years, the Hub has funded more than 230 research and outreach projects across three campuses and four priority areas; stewarding land and water resources; enriching human health and nutrition; ensuring animal health and welfare; and growing farm business and communities.
