Organic dairy farming and sustainability

Summary

The main cornerstones for enhancing the credibility of the organic dairy sector are: a) to realize an efficient roughage-based production, which requires significantly less inputs from arable land than conventional systems without producing more GHG emissions per unit of products as a whole; b) to enhance dairy cows’ health and welfare, indicated by a clearly improved longevity; and c) to develop the right matches between local conditions (in particular available feed sources) and cow genotypes, in order to achieve functioning systems with the lowest possible need for external nutrient sources.