THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF ORGANIC DAIRYING IN EUROPE

Summary

Dairy farming is the largest agricultural contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. In this study, the carbon footprint of organic dairying was evaluated by the means of life cycle assessment. Carbon footprint was calculated using real farm data from six European countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Italy and United Kingdom. Total of 34 farms were analyzed. Assessment was carried out with attributional approach with system boundaries from cradle to farm gate. For the dairy production, functional unit of 1 kg of energy corrected milk was used. Results averaged to 1.04 ± 0.29 kg CO2 equivalents per kg of energy corrected milk, which is consistent with recent previous studies. Main contributor to this is enteric fermentation from producing animals, resulting in 43 % of total GHG emissions, which is consistent with previous studies.