Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative, Green Bay, and Farmers for Sustainable Food, a nonprofit organization of food system partners, were awarded a $50 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a broad climate-smart initiative.
Following months of negotiating and planning, the partners announced that Edge officially signed an agreement with USDA for its new climate-smart grant.
Under this grant, Edge will spearhead a multi-partner project ― Farmer-led Climate Smart Commodities Initiative: Building Success from the Ground Up ― aimed at expanding climate-smart markets and establishing dairy and beet sugar as climate-smart commodities. The co-op applied for the grant last year through the USDA’s new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program.
The grant was one of 70 announced last fall. The initiative will build off a first-of-its-kind Framework for Farm-Level Sustainability Projects, which helps farmers determine what climate-smart production practices are most effective for their farms and provides tools to document the environmental and financial effects. The framework, developed in partnership between Edge and FSF, is currently being applied in projects involving farmers and others in the dairy food supply chain across the Upper Midwest.
“Edge and its partners have spent over seven years building a nationally recognized model for high-impact, tailored agricultural sustainability projects, and we have proven its success in a network of farmer-led conservation groups,” said Brody Stapel, president of Edge. “This grant will allow us to greatly expand our efforts, connecting farmers with tools and resources to implement even more climate-smart practices and verify their impact.”
Edge, based in Green Bay, is the third largest dairy cooperative in the country based on milk volume. Member farms are located in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
Farmers for Sustainable Food is a collaborative, industry-supported effort to promote and support farmer-led solutions to environmental challenges. Learn more at FarmersForSustainableFood.com.
Other partners for the project include:Â The Nature Conservancy, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, Clean Wisconsin, Agropur, Headwaters Agriculture Sustainability Partnership, Center for Farm Financial Management, Southwest Wisconsin Technical College, AgCentric – Minnesota Farm Business Management, Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, Houston Engineering, Inc., Farmobile, U.S. Beet Sugar Association, American Sugar Beet Growers Association, and University of Wisconsin-Madison/Extension.
