Apr 29, 2023 | FOODS |
The Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy conducted a study to address the urgent need for farm-level actions in the dairy industry to mitigate its environmental impacts, particularly related to global warming. The study aimed to investigate five possible mitigation actions and determine which one farmers would be willing to adopt. These actions included management and distribution of livestock manure and fertilizers, anaerobic manure treatment, optimization of the herd composition, feed quality, and heat recovery.
To analyze the environmental impacts, a life cycle assessment was performed on 63 dairy farms using the product environmental footprint approach. From these farms, four representative ones were selected based on quartiles. For each farm, three scenarios were examined: the reference impact (reference scenario), the application of the mitigation actions (best-case scenario), and the realistic scenario considering the actions farmers would actually implement.
The study found that the most effective mitigation actions in the best-case scenario were anaerobic manure treatment and management and distribution of livestock manure and fertilizers. These actions showed the potential to reduce total environmental impacts by 7–9% and 6–7% respectively. Farmers expressed a greater willingness to implement the latter strategy. Optimization of the herd composition, feed quality, and heat recovery resulted in a range of impact reduction between 0.01% and 5%.
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