Life cycle assessment of pasture-based dairy production systems: Current and future performance

Abstract

ha). This study demonstrates that the adoption of management practices that improve system efficiency will reduce the environmental impact per kilogram of FPCM and can contribute to the future sustainability of pasture-based dairy systems. However, improved system efficiency can be offset by the associated increase in productivity, highlighting the importance of reporting multiple environmental impact categories and functional units to prevent pollution swapping. New research and mitigation strategies will be required to improve the environmental sustainability of dairy systems beyond the target system in the future.

Modeling the environmental impacts of Asparagopsis as feed, a cow toilet and slurry acidification in two synthetic dairy farms

“…The results of the reference scenario are presented in Table 3 (absolute values) and in the supplementary information Table SI1 (relative values). The environmental impacts of the two farms in Oder-Spree (OS) and Diepholz (DH) were within the European average of dairy farms ( Table 3 ) and were comparable to those of other cradle-to-farm gate LCA studies in conventional dairy production [ 48 , 49 , 53 , 57 , 75 ]. Overall, the OS farm type had lower impacts on all categories ( Table 3 ).…”

“…We chose the cradle-to-farm-gate system boundary ( Fig. 1 ) to ensure comparability with the findings of other studies [ 38 , 48 , 49 , 57 ]. This included the production of required farm inputs for milk production, e.g.…”

“…ammonia (NH 3 ), methane (CH 4 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O), carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), and leaching (NO 3 ), and thus are sensitive to changes caused by the analyzed abatement measures. These impact categories have also been employed in previous studies [ 38 , 44 , 48 , 49 , 57 ]. The conversion factors used to calculate the global warming potential over a 100-year time horizon were 28 for CH 4 and 265 for N 2 O [ 61 , 62 ], while for the eutrophication potential, we used the conversion factor of 0.35 for NH 3 [ 61 ].…”

“…Thus, a holistic perspective is needed, encompassing the entire production system to assess their sustainability and to unveil potential trade-offs. In previous studies, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to assess the impacts of the dairy sector in different regions worldwide [ [38] , [39] , [40] , [41] ], to compare management strategies [ [42] , [43] , [44] , [45] , [46] ], to assess the effects of management alignments and abatement measures [ [47] , [48] , [49] ], and to identify key drivers of emissions in dairy production [ [50] , [51] , [52] , [53] ].…”

Can the use of digital technology improve the cow milk productivity in large dairy herds? Evidence from China's Shandong Province

“…Global cow milk production must increase in response to the rising demand for dairy products. However, dairy farming is increasingly blamed for environmental and climatic damage because it emits greenhouse gases (GHGs) (Herron et al, 2022). Improving cow productivity can be an effective strategy for sustainable milk production (Kelly et al, 2020) while reducing the associated environmental impacts (Lamkowsky et al, 2021;Faverdin et al, 2022).…”