By Blake Jackson
A new free modeling tool is giving researchers, farmers, and food processors the ability to evaluate how different management strategies on dairy farms affect environmental impact, energy use, and economic outcomes.
Known as the Ruminant Farm Systems (RuFaS) model, this open-source platform was developed by Cornell University researchers in collaboration with partners from academia, government, industry, and nonprofit organizations.
Developed through the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Cornell, with support from the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, RuFaS integrates data from multiple studies involving feed, crop production, and milk yields. The model predicts important outputs such as costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and resource use.
“If you’re trying to make a decision about feeding cows, or the reproduction cycle or the nutrient cycle, you can run those decisions through this model and try it there, without mucking up the farm,” said Daryl Nydam, professor of dairy health and production in CVM.
The model is customizable, representing real-world scenarios based on each farm’s data, including animals, manure systems, crops, and feed storage.
“RuFaS uses the information from your farm to represent your animals, your manure system, your field and crops, and your feed storage, as closely to reality as possible,” Elle Andreen, model support specialist with PRO-DAIRY, a Cornell extension program.
“And then it allows you to change any of that information to understand what would happen if something were different. RuFaS is so multifaceted, farmers and researchers can use it in many ways to support their needs.”
Nationwide adoption is already underway. According to Nicole Ayache, chief sustainability officer at the National Milk Producers Federation, RuFaS has been adopted into the National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) environmental stewardship assessments program. Since October 2025, 215 farms across 20 states, from 30 to 14,000 cows, have used RuFaS through the FARM interface.
Describing RuFaS as “like SimCity but for dairy farming,” Kristan Reed, the lead developer and now a freelance consultant, said, “We wanted to build a better dairy farm simulation model that was more flexible, able to represent a wider range of management practices and able to be used by a wider set of people, including scientists and people in the dairy industry."
Photo Credit: gettyimages-peopleimages
Categories: New York, Livestock, Dairy Cattle