Produktionsstruktur und Kostenanalyse unterschiedlicher Typen ökologisch wirtschaftender Milchviehbetriebe

Summary

Production and business data from organic dairy farms in three German regions are being retrieved in a survey extending over several years. The farms are classified according to site conditions and feeding intensity, the latter being defined as the amount of concentrate use. In a parallel part of the project environmental impacts of the different production systems are analysed and confronted with the results obtained in view of productivity and cost effectiveness.
While the variability of the business data is high and class differences do not in gen-eral prove to be statistically significant a tendency for lower production costs in sys-tems with larger herd size and more intensive feeding strategy is observed. Further investigations will separate the effects of intensity and size. Those systems that oper-ate in the most cost-effective way have shown to risk at the same time potential envi-ronmental damage especially through nutrient imbalances and resulting ammonia losses.