Links between profitability, nitrogen surplus, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy intensity on organic and conventional dairy farms

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationships between profitability, nitrogen (N) surplus, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and energy intensity and factors influencing these relationships in dairy farming. In-depth data from 10 conventional and 8 organic dairy farms in Western Norway were analyzed. Organic farms had lower N surplus per hectare (local, on-farm) and per unit output (global, cradle-to-farm-gate), and lower estimated GHG emissions and energy intensity per unit output, whereas labor input and farm profits did not differ. Higher profitability tended to be associated with improved performance of the environmental indicators examined. Intensification through increased use of concentrates tended to improve profit and reduce N surplus, GHG emissions, and energy intensity per unit output within each farming system while N surplus per hectare could be negatively affected. To ensure a balanced representation of the environmental consequences of both organic and conventional farming systems, our results give support to extensive examination of both area- and product-based environmental performance indicators.

KEYWORDS:

• Profit
• organic farming
• environment
• life cycle assessment
• sustainability

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully thank all participating farmers and accounting offices for their collaboration during the project in providing the relevant information. We are also grateful to the staff of the Norwegian Farm Business Survey at NIBIO who carried out the collection and validation of the farm accounting data. A special thanks to Maximilian Schueler at the Thünen Institute of Organic Farming for his work to develop, adapt, and improve the FARM model to describe the impact of dairy farming on the environment. We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their consideration and helpful comments and suggestions.

Supplemental data

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Notes

¹ Emergy is defined as all the available energy that is used in the work of making a product expressed in units of one type of energy (Odum 1996).

Additional information

Funding

Financial support from the Research Council of Norway (grant number 199487/E40) and “Møre og Romsdal” County Municipality, Division for Agriculture and Food is gratefully acknowledged.