Sustainable dairy: precision livestock farming’s effects

Precision livestock farming techniques include sensors and tools to install on livestock farms and/or animals to monitor them and support the decision-making process of farmers. Precision livestock farming also detects alerting conditions and improves livestock efficiency.

The direct consequences of this monitoring include enhanced animal welfare, health and productivity, improved farmer lifestyle (fewer hours), knowledge and traceability of livestock products. The indirect consequences, instead, include improved carbon footprint and social-economic indicators of livestock products.

Researchers from the University of Milan, Italy, looked at developing an indicator applicable to dairy farming that takes into account the indirect consequences.

Sustainability pillars at dairy farms

The indicator was developed combining the 3 sustainability pillars (with specific criteria): environmental (carbon footprint), social (5 freedoms of animal welfare and antimicrobial use) and economic (cost of technology and manpower use).

It was then tested on 3 dairy farms in Italy, where a baseline traditional scenario (BS) was compared with an alternative scenario (AS) where precision livestock farming techniques and improved management solutions were adopted.

The first farm looked at heat stress, while the remaining 2 concentrated on the detection of oestrus events and effect of free access to pasture.

The results highlighted that the carbon footprint reduce in all AS by between 6% and 9% and the socio-economic indicators entailed improvements in animals and workers welfare with some differences based on the tested technique.