The Hidden Costs of Livestock Environmental Sustainability: The Case of Podolian Cattle

Abstract

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is currently one of the most widely used methods for assessing the environmental impacts and performance of livestock products. According to this procedure, intensification of animal production is generally advocated to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions compared with extensive grazing systems due to the use of selected breeds, with enhanced productivity, and the significant reductions in CH 4 emissions consequent to the use of concentrates rather than forages. In addition, the impact of intensive systems on land use is much lower. However, free-ranging Podolian cattle show a number of positive environmental effects, such as increased climate stability, improved soil functionality, water quality and footprint and preservation from fires along with maintaining an economically active social community in otherwise unproductive, marginal areas. Other beneficial effects of extensive Podolian farming system include low competition with human nutrition and high level of animal health and welfare. An economic evaluation of these non-commodity outputs should be indirectly estimated by the avoided costs (e.g. reduced veterinary interventions and therapy treatments) or the lack of profits (e.g. direct payments for the enhancement of environmental performance) that would have incurred in their absence. These economic evaluations should be used in order to allocate them as further outputs to be included in the LCA in order to achieve a more accurate estimation of the impact of the Podolian farming system.

Dairy Farms and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): The Allocation Criterion Useful to Estimate Undesirable Products

“…Emissions from Crop and Soil Residues N 2 O and CO 2 emissions from soils and crop residues are included in each crop input selected in the SimaPro database, although several categories were modified and accordingly loaded. For example, the carbon sequestration potential of permanent pastures was estimated between 0.01 and 0.3 Gt C year −1 [44]; thus, carbon sequestration was estimated according to Dollé et al [45] and Pirlo and Lolli [10]. The CO 2 emissions from livestock were not estimated because the annual net CO 2 emissions are assumed to be zero as the CO 2 photosynthesized by plants is returned to the atmosphere as respired CO 2 [36].…”

Dairy Buffalo Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Affected by a Management Choice: The Production of Wheat Crop

“…GWP: The impact on climate change was assessed using the IPCC characterization factors for the 100-year time horizon, according to the EDIP (2013) method, adopted in the study. As for climate stability, permanent grasslands store nearly as much carbon as forests (EIP-AGRI 2014) [36], and the carbon sequestration potential of permanent pastures was estimated between 0.01 and 0.3 Gt (gross tons of volume) C year −1 [37,38], but all the farms involved in our research were without pasture. On other hand, the crop, field and fertilizer emissions were assessed with equations provided by IPCC guidelines [17].…”

Development of an Algorithm for Rapid Herd Evaluation and Predicting Milk Yield of Mastitis Cows Based on Infrared Thermography

“…During the ongoing automation of dairy farming, objective and reliable tools for diagnosing the condition of animals are in great demand. It is necessary to evaluate milk yield, the parameters of milk produced and the general condition of the animal [1][2][3][4][5]. Animal productivity is influenced by many factors, such as the interaction between animals and humans [6].…”