Data di Pubblicazione:
2014
Citazione:
Excellent dairy farming profile / M. Zucali, L. Bava, M. Guerci, A. Tamburini, A. Sandrucci - In: Livestock, climate change and food security : conference abstract book, 19-20 May 2014, Madrid, Spain[s.l] : Wordpress, 2014 May. - pp. 106-106 (( convegno Livestock, climate change and food security tenutosi a Madrid nel 2014.
Abstract:
In the recent years, dairy farmers are requested to achieve a sustainable profit to continue their activity and to pay
attention to the environment quality. The objectives of this research were to identify and describe intensive dairy
farms with an excellent profile in term of environmental and economic sustainability and milk nutritive value. The
research involved 28 dairy farms located in the North of Italy, members of a cheese factory, which produces Grana
Padano cheese O.P.D. Through personal interviews to the farmers, a questionnaire was addressed to obtain information
about the crop systems, fuel consumption, animals management, housing systems, feeding strategies, purchased feeds,
fertilizers and pesticides. Environmental impacts of milk production were assessed through a cradle-to-farm-gate Life
Cycle Assessment considering global warming, eutrophication, acidification, land use and energy use; the functional
unit was 1 kg Fat Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM). To estimate farm economic sustainability, gross margin and income
over feed cost (IOFC) were calculated; milk quality was defined by fat and protein percentages. The environmental
impacts and the economic and milk quality parameters of each farms were indexed from 1 to 3 (bad to good), based
on distance from the average values of the group of farms. From the joint of the five environmental indices, a global
sustainability index was calculated. Farms were classified on the basis of dairy e ciency (DE=kg FPCM/kg DMI).
High e cient herds (DE 1.4) performed better in terms of for global warming, energy use and eutrophication showing
higher indices than the herds with low e cient cows (DE=<1.2). This result is explained by the characteristics of the
high e cient herds: high milk production (31.0 2.88 kg FPCM/cow day), medium feed self-su ciency (60.3 14.0
%), balanced cow diet (1.35 0.41 forage/concentrate). These herds produced high quantity of milk with less feed,
reducing the environmental impacts related to feed production. As manure and enteric emissions weigh a lot on global
warming potential, achieving high production levels with less animals allows to mitigate the climate impact per milk
unit. Eutrophication is mainly due to crop production activities on-farm; as a consequence farms with high feed selfsu
ciency, that produced most of their feed on-farm, have high eutrophication impact. They tend to administer high
forage diets that negatively a ect milk production, increasing impacts per unit of product. In conclusion the excellent
farms were the farms with high dairy e ciency, they showed the best performances in terms of both milk quality,
economic results and environmental sustainability.
Tipologia IRIS:
03 - Contributo in volume
Elenco autori:
M. Zucali, L. Bava, M. Guerci, A. Tamburini, A. Sandrucci
Link alla scheda completa:
Titolo del libro:
Livestock, climate change and food security : conference abstract book, 19-20 May 2014, Madrid, Spain