Coordinating a “basket of incentives” to facilitate resilience in the dairy sector

The dairy farm sector has been the backbone of rural communities throughout the northeastern United States for more than 100 years. Beyond this important heritage, the region’s dairy farms drive economic activity in its rural communities. However, from late 2014 through September of 2020, the farmgate price of milk has been below the cost of production for most dairy farms in the region (Farm Credit East 2020; Karszes et al. 2020). The loss of dairy farms is not only a tragedy for the multigenerational farm families, it is a loss for working landscapes, rural communities, and the economy of the Northeast region. The intersection of the dairy farm financial crisis with the growing urgency to find solutions to the water quality and climate problems provides a unique opportunity to feed two birds out of one hand. Public and private sector collaboration can create pathways for transformation in the dairy farm sector—transformation toward farms that have financial resilience and the ability to help address these crucial environmental problems. Protecting water quality and reducing net greenhouse gas emissions are essential. Production systems that can do this while earning profits will not require ongoing public investments or subsidies to produce these necessary ecosystem services. However, creating the pathways for widespread dairy farm transformation requires significant investment now. Planting the seeds of change today will yield an ongoing stream of economic and environmental benefits into the future. The burden of this transformation cannot be put on the farmers alone. It is in society’s best interest to invest in a healthy dairy farm sector and assist …