FEATURES
The Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge

by J.F. Pirro

Fun and education for the future of the industry

Elizabeth Smith, a student at Penn State, takes notes during her evaluation of a farm in the 2009 Northeast Regional Dairy Challenge. Photos courtesy of the Northeast Regional Dairy Challenge.

For Dan Lyness, participation in the Northeast Regional North American Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge is a natural. The Delaware Valley College senior-to-be grew up on his family’s 130-acre Spring Run Farm in Pittstown, N.J.

His father always focused on beef cattle, hay and crops, and plants another 500 neighboring acres, mostly in corn, oats and hay. Dan, a dairy science major at the Doylestown, Pa., agricultural college, is slowly starting his own cowherd back home while finishing school. “I was excited,” he says about participating in the challenge. “It presented a new side of the industry.”

Last year, a total of 120 students from 13 colleges in the Northeast and Canada competed in the annual event at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Cobleskill in Glens Falls, N.Y. This October, the eighth challenge rotates to Alfred State University in Batavia, N.Y.

Participants spend two days combing through cow and farm management data, as well as financial records, and then conduct an on-site evaluation on one of three participating farms, which included an extensive interview with the volunteer producer. The five-member mixed university teams then present to a panel of judges, offering producers ideas for increasing efficiency and profitability. The challenge represents another effort on the part of the industry to further itself and to appeal to the next generation of dairy farmers.

“It’s awesome,” says Todd Webb, the dairy superintendent at Del-Val. “There was never anything like this before. Nothing else comes close. It’s really the capstone of the whole (dairy sciences) program at any school. From the teaching side, it also helps us to understand where our own weaknesses are.”

This past April, the North American Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge was hosted by Cal Poly and California State University-Fresno and held in Visalia, Calif. The national, which partners with four neighboring dairy farms, rotates through the country each spring.

NAIDC 2010 attracted teams from 30 universities throughout the U.S. and Canada. Penn State University’s Janelle Hartzell, Amy Miller, Elizabeth Smith and Peter Yoder were awarded a second-place platinum. Gabriella Varga is Penn State’s coach. Webb’s Delaware Valley team was among the gold award winners.

At the national, carefully culled teams compete as a school, though the Northeast region is set up as a noncompetitive event where the comingling within multi-university teams is considered the top prize.

North American Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge participants.

“At our school, or any school, we’re learning different things, even if we’re in the same basic major,” Lyness says. “When we talk and work together, we all have something to offer.”

As much as possible, no more than one dairy sciences student from any given college is on the same team.

“We’ve taken out the competitive aspect to focus on the education and teaching,” Webb explains. “That’s the overall advantage. I would love to see the national go that way. It would create an entirely different atmosphere.”

Garrett Dudley of SUNY Cobleskill assesses feed samples during the 2009 Northeast Dairy Challenge held in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Let the challenge begin

Schools arrive late on a Thursday. That evening, after completing a self-skills assessment form at registration, students are assigned a team and a nearby farm. Teams are provided with the farms’ detailed data, nutrition information, milking procedures, forage analysis and financial statements, according to the Dairy Herd Improvement Association (DHIA).

By 9 a.m. on Friday, teams are on-site at their assigned farm. “For two hours you pick apart the farm,” says Tori Fanion, a Del-Val senior from western Massachusetts. “You’re looking for pros and cons, but sometimes it’s hard to find the problems.”

Then, for 12 minutes, teams get to ask the farm owners questions before heading back to the hotel to generate a PowerPoint report. The reports are due by 6 p.m. Teams are permitted to see a printout of their work one hour prior to their 20-minute presentation on Saturday morning. All team members must speak. A panel of four or five judges that’s assigned to each farm follows with its questions.

“The Dairy Challenge is a unique program that helps to build tomorrow’s dairy leaders,” says Raechel Sattazahn, the publicity co-chair for the Northeast Regional Dairy Challenge. “In addition to teaching students practical dairy knowledge, it also provides them with tremendous opportunity to develop communications skills and teamwork.”

The panels typically consist of a veterinarian, a financial whiz, a nutritionist, a fellow (though distant) producer and sometimes a reproduction performance specialist (a breeder). The teams of judges have followed the same student schedule and participated in the same evaluation exercise as the students. They develop their own PowerPoint report, which they present following the student presentations.

Webb says the students serve as a panel of consultants flagging and prioritizing each farm’s biggest bottlenecks, and figuring what changes could get a producer the biggest payback in the shortest amount of time.

“A big thing on a lot of dairy farms is overcrowding,” Lyness says. “They either need more barn space or less cows. Many have trouble expanding with the land they have, but we’ll brainstorm the best solutions.”

Participants evaluate all areas of the farm and later offer recommendations to farm owners and management.

Recognition and participation

Though noncompetitive, there is an awards banquet, and presentations are evaluated as platinum, gold and silver. The top performing teams are given the Don Rogers Platinum, named after one of the challenge’s founding fathers. Del-Val, which took 10 students to last fall’s regional, had students involved in three platinum and two Don Rogers’ teams.

To prepare, Webb, Del-Val’s coach, meets with his participants one night a week to focus on challenge topics: reproduction, DHIA records, nutrition, finances, environmental stewardship and manure management, for example.

Building teamwork is an important component of the Dairy Challenge program.

Like dairy science programs at other colleges in the Northeast, those at Del-Val get plenty of hands-on experience. Del-Val generally has 30 to 35 dairy science students at any time, 140 dairy animals, including 65 head of replacement heifers and 75 cows, of which 65 are milking on 150 acres of cropland on campus and another 100 acres at a satellite farm 10 miles away.

With the challenge, participating farms, their producers and cows benefit as much as the best and brightest dairy students. “It just gives them other ideas,” Fanion suggests.

“They probably can’t do it all, but they can take some of it,” Lyness adds.

Dairy Challenge participants meet with Kevin Peck of Clear Echo Farm, one of the host farms for the 2009 Northeast Regional Dairy Challenge.

Webb gives lots of credit to the dairy farms who volunteer their live learning labs: “They give it all up,” he says. “Then, they have to sit in an auditorium all day and listen to their farm getting cut up, but I’ve never seen any one of them ever be anything but grateful.”

After the student presentation, while the judges deliberate, everyone else gravitates to the auditorium lobby. Again, the students get to speak one-on-one with each other and the participating producers.

“Just consider the number of volunteers it takes to run the Challenge, and the number of industry representatives and companies and schools, and the amount of money to put out a real educational opportunity,” Webb says. “It’s nice to see the industry, even competing companies and farms, unite for the greater good [of the industry].”

Sattazahn says the agricultural sponsors recognize the importance of developing the skills of future dairy producers and industry professionals. “Ultimately, it helps to secure a stronger future for the dairy industry,” she says.

Dairy Challenge participants visit host farms first-hand to determine improvements that could be made on the farm.

What the future holds

While Fanion stresses over what the future in the industry holds for her, the former large animal major who changed her major to dairy science, knows she loves cows. “I enjoy the industry,” she says.

Lyness won’t have to stress over a job hunt when he returns full-time to the family farm, but he still feels the pressure to build his herd. He’s up to seven cows. His dad helps while he’s at school, but Dan gets home two weekends a month.

“I see it as a way of life,” Lyness says. “It’s not just a career or a job. I admire my father greatly. It also helps to go to agricultural school and to study with kids who like the same things you do.”

Fanion says the challenge has been a good experience: “Usually we just learn from our teachers,” she says. “They talk to us, but [with the challenge] we go out and put all that knowledge to use. We come down [to the dairy barns] for classes, too, but [the challenge] takes it to the next level.”

The author has been published in national and regional magazines as well as daily and weekly alternative city newspapers. A gentleman farmer in Quakertown, Pa., he writes about people, social trends, historic preservation and 18th century America, agrarian culture, land use and sports and recreation topics. Comment or question? Visit www.farmingforumsite.com and join in the discussions.