Improvements to dairy farms for environmental sustainability in Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano production systems

Abstract

Grana Padano (GP) and Parmigiano Reggiano (PR) are the two most important Italian PDO cheeses. To improve the environmental sustainability of their production, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was completed on 84 dairy farms located in the province of Mantova (Northern Italy). In particular, 33 farms delivered milk for GP production, whereas 51 farms to dairies for PR production. In GP farms, maize silage represented 33.7% of total farmland and alfalfa represented 28.1%. While in PR farms, alfalfa represented 63.6% of total farmland. Fat and Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM) and Dairy Efficiency (DE, calculated as kg of produced FPCM per kg of DM intake) were different in the two production system: FPCM was 30.2 ± 4.32 kg/d in GP farms and 25.0 ± 4.71 kg/d in PR farms; DE was 1.35 ± 0.26 in GP farms, and 1.15 ± 0.22 in PR farms. Mitigation strategies to improve both environmental and economic sustainability were suggested focussing on forage crop production, milk production, herd management and off-farm purchased feed. From the preliminary results, there is evidence that improvements are needed. Climate Change (kg CO₂ eq/kg FPCM) and Land Use (kg Carbon deficit/kg FPCM) were similar (1.38 ± 0.33 and 19.3 ± 7.08 for GP system; 1.46 ± 0.37 and 21.8 ± 11.4 for PR system). The most efficient farms in terms of milk production and DE generally showed the best environmental and economic sustainability, while the others show worse outcomes, mainly due to poor DE, livestock-management issues, feed purchase and ration composition.

Highlights

• 84 farms producing milk for Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese were studied in the Province of Mantova.

• Life Cycle Assessment was used to quantify the environmental impacts of farms and statistical analysis was helpful to identify 6 clusters.

• Farm, animal and milk efficiencies were poor and mitigation strategies to improve the sustainability of milk production were suggested.

Keywords:

• Grana Padano
• Parmigiano Reggiano
• dairy efficiency
• environmental sustainability
• Life Cycle Assessment

Acknowledgements

Authors would like to thank the expert technicians Sebastiano Buffa, Stefano Garimberti, Marco Bellini, Gabriele Caleffi and Daniele Longhi for the data collection and Consorzio Latterie Virgilio for the data contribution.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European Union under the project “Life DOP – Demonstrative model of circular economy process in a high quality dairy industry” (LIFE15 ENV/IT/000585).