Abstract
Agriculture across the globe needs to produce “more
with less.” Productivity should be increased in a sustainable
manner so that the environment is not further
degraded, management practices are both socially acceptable
and economically favorable, and future generations
are not disadvantaged. The objective of this
paper was to compare the environmental efficiency of 2
divergent strains of Holstein-Friesian cows across 2 contrasting
dairy management systems (grazing and nongrazing)
over multiple years and so expose any genetic
× environment (G×E) interaction. The models were
an extension of the traditional efficiency analysis to
account for undesirable outputs (pollutants), and estimate
efficiency measures that allow for the asymmetric
treatment of desirable outputs (i.e., milk production)
and undesirable outputs. Two types of models were
estimated, one considering production inputs (land,
nitrogen fertilizers, feed, and cows) and the other not,
thus allowing the assessment of the effect of inputs by
comparing efficiency values and rankings between models.
Each model type had 2 versions, one including 2
types of pollutants (greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen
surplus) and the other 3 (greenhouse gas emissions,
nitrogen surplus, and phosphorus surplus). Significant
differences were found between efficiency scores among
the systems. Results indicated no G×E interaction;
however, even though the select genetic merit herd consuming
a diet with a higher proportion of concentrated
feeds was most efficient in the majority of models, cows
of the same genetic merit on higher forage diets could
be just as efficient. Efficiency scores for the low forage
groups were less variable from year to year, which
reflected the uniformity of purchased concentrate feeds.
The results also indicate that inputs play an important
role in the measurement of environmental efficiency of
dairy systems and that animal health variables (incidence
of udder health disorders and body condition
score) have a significant effect on the environmental
efficiency of each dairy system. We conclude that traditional
narrow measures of performance may not always
distinguish dairy farming systems best fitted to future requirements.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 7014 - 7031 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Journal of Dairy Science |
Volume | 96 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Print publication - Nov 2013 |
Bibliographical note
1023392Keywords
- Environmental efficiency
- Experimental dairy farm
- Nonparametric data envelopment analysis