MODESTO -- Western United Dairymen of Modesto won a $1 million federal grant last week to test a new way of monitoring groundwater quality on dairy farms.
It was one of 52 grants, totaling $22.5 million, announced by the Natural Resources Conservation Service through its Conservation Innovation Grants program.
Three other recipients with Modesto ties got grants, which cover half the cost of each project.
The dairy group will look at reducing costs by "focusing monitoring efforts on a cluster of representative dairies with a range of characteristics similar to other dairies in the Central Valley," a news release said.
The project will identify best management practices for various dairy and soil types, the release said.
The other grants:
• $150,000 to Fiscalini Farms, a milk and cheese producer west of Modesto, to evaluate a system for drying manure. The waste is left after methane is extracted in a digester and burned to generate electricity.
• $372,478 to Sustainable Conservation of San Francisco, which has a Modesto office, for efforts on water quality and other goals in the Mokelumne River watershed.
• $761,820 to SureHarvest of Soquel, Santa Cruz County, which has a Modesto branch. The money will help producers and handlers of specialty crops measure their progress on sustainability. The work will be done in California and 21 other states.
"The grants will help to spur creativity and problem-solving to benefit conservation-minded farmers and ranchers," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in the release.
On the Net: www.nrcs.usda.gov.
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