The aim of the study was to investigate both environmental and economic performances of Luxembourgish dairy farms in order to assess possibilities and limits of improving economic competitiveness via increasing environmental efficiency. In the environmental field, four LCA impact categories (carbon footprint, energy consumption, acidification, eutrophication) were analysed, while in the economic field, costs, incomes and profit of the farms were investigated. A main result was that a sustainable dairy production with less environmental impact in all considered categories is also of advantage in terms of farm competitiveness. The most efficient farms reach also the highest profit. The case study proves that a high environmental performance is not only of advantage in terms of economic competitiveness, but is even a necessary prerequisite for best economic performances.
Description of the subject. Many decision support tools (DSTs) have been developed to help dairy farmers optimally manage the high variability in the quality and availability of grass-based fodder, but their adoption rate remains low. Objectives. The objective was to characterize and understand the adoption rate of DSTs related to using grass-based fodder. Methodology. A sample of 61 Walloon (Belgium) dairy farmers responded to an online survey concerning their current use of 23 DSTs related to using grass-based fodder either directly (pasture or grassland) or indirectly (feeding or techno-economic), as well as barriers to and incentives for adopting them, their current interest in DSTs, and satisfaction with the guidance on using these DSTs. Results. Pasture management DSTs were used the least, even though farmers were the most interested in them. Farmers used simple indicators rather than software or automated tools. Farmers indicated that DSTs were too expensive and time consuming, even if they could ultimately save them time and money. Continuing education is lacking. Four types of users were identified who influence the use of DSTs: high user no grazing (H-NG), high user traditional or technical grazing (H-T/TG), low user traditional grazing (L-TG), and moderate user organic (M-ORG). Conclusions. Communicating with end-users during each step of DST development would help (1) identify the specific needs of a diverse set of dairy farmers and (2) develop DSTs that better correspond to their practices. More long-term guidance is required to inform farmers about existing DSTs and to transfer the knowledge required to use them.
The increasing human population and demand for animal food products raise the issue of impacts of animal systems on food security caused by their use of human-edible feed and/or tillable land. The utility of replacing animal systems with potential food-crop systems needs to be assessed but is associated with many uncertainties. Some metrics analyse the contribution of current animal systems to food security, especially the dimension of food availability. These methods address feed conversion efficiency (i.e. total (‘gross’) or human-edible (‘net’)) or the efficiency of agricultural land use (i.e. total, permanent grassland, and tillable land) but never both simultaneously. The purpose of this study was to develop a new metric—‘net productivity’—to represent the performances of current animal systems more accurately by considering both the use of human-edible feed and agricultural land. Through a protein assessment, we analysed the ability of the existing and the new metrics to assess the performances of 111 dairy farms in Wallonia (Belgium). We found that net productivity was positively correlated with both metrics of feed conversion efficiency and negatively correlated with the three metrics of land use. To analyse the influence of farm characteristics, we grouped the farms into four clusters using k-means clustering based on these metrics of contribution to food security and then performed redundancy analysis to select the most influential farm characteristics aiming to highlight contrasted farm strategies. The highest net productivity was reached by an ‘intensive and net efficient’ farm strategy, which had intensive grass-based management, high milk production per cow, appropriate use of concentrates, and well-managed dairy followers (i.e. replacement heifers and calves). The newly developed metric of net productivity can be useful to quantify the contribution of dairy systems to food security by considering both the use of human-edible protein and agricultural land simultaneously.
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