Vorzüglichkeit der ökologischen Weidemilchproduktion im Kontext steigender Kraftfutterpreise

Summary

Owing to strongly volatile and temporarily very low milk payout over the last years with operational costs showing an upward trend, organic milk production associated with intense pasture utilization has gained in excellence. Our contribution compares a sample of 38 randomly selected South German pasture farms with conventionally farming top enterprises in the financial years 2009 – 2011. The results obtained demonstrate that in spite of the smaller sizes of the 34 selected firms, organic pasture farms can generate higher hourly earnings than conventionally farming top enterprises thanks to high basic ration performance from cheap pasture grass and low input of concentrated feed with high prices for organic milk. This advantage will even be greater with increasing prices for concentrated feed and/or operating resources if the milk prices are kept at the level of the previous years.