198 often create a tremendous amount of growth. Satellites measure plant health by detecting the amount of chlorophyll in plants—the more chlorophyll, the greener the plants and the more biomass are in the images. Images that appear yellow to red have limited pasture available, indicating it is time to rotate cows off and rest those pastures, or sometimes it is indicative of something environmental such as excess or deficient moisture. Planet was chosen because its constellation provides near-daily imagery at high resolution everywhere on Earth. Organic Valley piloted the approach on 20 farms, using ArcGIS Pro to analyze the imagery and automate custom reports for the farmers. For the first two years of the program, ground measurements were taken on a regular basis to compare against the analyzed Planet images. The initial 20 farms in the program demonstrated successful implementation, so Organic Valley expanded the program to nearly 100 farms in 2022. For farmers, a superior degree of precision pasture feeding has the potential to fine-tune practices, tying what they see on their custom maps to what’s in their milk tanks. Farmers in the program have shared some of the things they can now see thanks to the high-tech approach, such as areas slow to bounce back that need more nutrients; areas irrigators are missing; weak areas of growth that might perform better with a different plant; and knowing when they can cut forage early to stockpile feed for winter months. With positive proof demonstrated to date and automation in place, Organic Valley started offering the precision grazing program in 2023 to any of the small family farms within the cooperative interested in the technology. Organic Approaches to Improve All Outcomes GIS is one of many enterprise systems at Organic Valley that keeps track of the variability of farming. The cooperative applies GIS to help determine the daily “assembly” side of the business, which encompasses hauling milk to processing plants as well. Organic Valley contracts with a number of regional milk haulers, using GIS to determine the best routes to farms with volumes that will aggregate to a full truck. “This is a biological system, so if the grass withers up, milk dries up,” Marty said. The bar charts on the first page of the Pasture Report are what’s called a grazing wedge. The height of the bars indicates the amount of biomass, and the greener color shows where growth is greatest. Image courtesy of Organic Valley.
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