Study: Dairy Industry Makes Strides toward Carbon Footprint Reduction
Agricultural greenhouse gases (GHG) make up 8.1% of total U.S. GHG emissions. Therefore, the dairy cattle farming industry is challenged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining or increasing profitability, according to a study published in the Journal of Dairy Science. In this study, researchers report that farms with lower carbon footprints and higher-producing cows are more profitable.
Investigators Di Liang, candidate, and Victor Cabrera, associate professor for the department of dairy science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, used the Integrated Farm System Model (IFSM), available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to simulate the performance of a representative Wisconsin dairy farm and predict both financial and environmental outputs over a 25-year period. An IFSM simulation takes into account numerous interacting processes such as crop and pasture production, crop harvest, feed storage, grazing, feeding and manure handling.