Modelling greenhouse gas emissions from organic and conventional dairy farms

Abstract

Dairy farming is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in agriculture. There are numerous scientific studies analysing GHG flows and testing GHG reduction methods in dairy farming, yet very few scientific papers cover all the relevant GHG flows. GHG flows that are difficult to quantify, such as C sequestration in soils, the effects of land-use change (LUC) or the energy input used to produce capital equipment, are not always considered. This paper describes the development and application of a model for energy and GHG accounting in dairy farming. This new model enables all relevant nutrient, energy and GHG flows to be modelled at farm level. This then forms the basis for system analysis and derivation of GHG mitigation strategies. The model was used on 18 organic and 18 conventional farms in Germany. Calculated CO2-eq emissions per kg of Energy Corrected Milk (ECM) were 995 g on average for organic farms (org) and 1,048 g on average for conventional farms (con). The largest contribution (55 % (org) and 43 % (con)) to total GHG emissions came from enteric methane emissions (549 g CO2-eq (kg ECM)-1 (org) and 449 g CO2-eq (kg ECM)-1 (con)). On the organic dairy farms, there was an increase in soil humus and therefore carbon storage and sequestration in soils, whereas the GHG emissions for the conventional farms included CO2 emissions from LUC due to soybean usage. The significantly higher energy input in the conventional systems resulted from the production of energy-intensive concentrates, mineral fertilisers and pesticides, and transportation (imported feed). This study shows that there are many factors that influence GHG emissions in dairy farming, and that these factors often interact with each other. An increase in productivity is one of several optimisation strategies; however, it must not be at the expense of productive lifetime or require an extremely high amount of concentrates. GHG reduction in dairy farming requires farm-specific optimisation approaches due to the heterogeneity of production systems.

Keywords

• energy balance
• methane emissions
• modelling
• system approach
• land-use change
• carbon sequestration
• mitigation strategy