Organic and Conventional Dairy Farm Comparisons in Ontario, Canada

Management Practices and Their Potential Influence on Johne’s Disease Transmission on Canadian Organic Dairy Farms—A Conceptual Analysis

“…These findings are supported by the earlier Ontario study from Stonehouse et al [9] but not by Ogini et al [10]. Ogini et al [10] and Stonehouse et al [9] showed that although organic farmers have fewer crop sales revenues, or fewer crop and milk sales revenues per hectare, respectively, the majority of them are better off economically because they tend to rely more heavily on self-sufficiency rather than on off-farm inputs. This self-sufficiency is represented, for example, in raising their own replacement stock, growing their own livestock feed, as well as no use of chemical fertilizer, herbicides, or pesticides.…”

“…In an economic analysis of those farms by Stonehouse et al [9] organic producers reported lower expenses for veterinary costs, drugs or breeding compared to their conventional counterparts.…”

“…Milk yield on organic farms is usually lower and the herd size is comparable or smaller than on conventional farms [7][8][9]. An indicator for milk quality is the number of white blood cells in the milk, commonly referred to as somatic cell count or SCC, with low SCC indicating good milk quality.…”

Sustainability of livestock production systems : a comparing conventional and organic livestock husbandry

“…The reported premium varied from 15% in the Netherlands (Berentsen et al, 2012) to 84% in Canada (O'Hara andParsons, 2013). In 2001, Stonehouse et al (2001) reported for Canada no price premium for organic, but at the time of the research the organic market was not yet well established. Papers also agreed on the higher rate of employability in the organic sector (McBride and Greene, 2009;Del Prado et al, 2011;O'Hara and Parsons, 2013), but most papers did not provide exact numbers and did not specify own versus hired labour.…”

“…Less agreement existed with regard to costs. Although most studies found lower costs per cow for organic farms compared to conventional farms (Stonehouse et al, 2001;Berentsen et al, 2012;O'Hara and Parsons, 2013), they mostly dealt only with variable costs, such as concentrates, fertilisers or veterinary costs, and did not mention fixed costs, such as investments in land or farm labour spent on producing feed, nor considered to express costs per kg of milk produced. McBride and Greene (2009) found higher costs for organic farms and attributed this to the relatively small scale of the farms.…”