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Food Footprint as a Measure of Sustainability for Grazing Dairy Farms

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Abstract

Livestock productions require significant resources allocation in the form of land, water, energy, air, and capital. Meanwhile, owing to increase in the global demand for livestock products, it is wise to consider sustainable livestock practices. In the past few decades, footprints have emerged as indicators for sustainability assessment. In this study, we are introducing a new footprint measure to assess sustainability of a grazing dairy farm while considering carbon, water, energy, and economic impacts of milk production. To achieve this goal, a representative farm was developed based on grazing dairy practices surveys in the State of Michigan, USA. This information was incorporated into the Integrated Farm System Model (IFSM) to estimate the farm carbon, water, energy, and economic impacts and associated footprints for ten different regions in Michigan. A multi-criterion decision-making method called VIKOR was used to determine the overall impacts of the representative farms. This new measure is called the food footprint. Using this new indicator, the most sustainable milk production level (8618 kg/cow/year) was identified that is 19.4% higher than the average milk production (7215 kg/cow/year) in the area of interest. In addition, the most sustainable pasture composition was identified as 90% tall fescue with 10% white clover. The methodology introduced here can be adopted in other regions to improve sustainability by reducing water, energy, and environmental impacts of grazing dairy farms, while maximizing the farm profit and productions.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the US Department of Agriculture – National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project MICL02359 and the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, Michigan State University, 524 S. Shaw Lane, Room 216, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    M. Melissa Rojas-Downing, A. Pouyan Nejadhashemi, Fariborz Daneshvar, J. Sebastian Hernandez-Suarez, Mohammad Abouali, Matthew R. Herman, Sabah Anwer Dawood Al Masraf & Timothy Harrigan

  2. Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, 1066 Bogue Street, Room A486, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    A. Pouyan Nejadhashemi & Kimberly A. Cassida

  3. Department of Manufacturing and Construction Engineering Technology, Purdue University at Fort Wayne, 2101 East Coliseum Boulevard, Room ET 221M, Fort Wayne, IN, 46805, USA

    Behin Elahi

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  1. M. Melissa Rojas-Downing
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Correspondence to A. Pouyan Nejadhashemi.

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Rojas-Downing, M.M., Nejadhashemi, A.P., Elahi, B. et al. Food Footprint as a Measure of Sustainability for Grazing Dairy Farms. Environmental Management 62, 1073–1088 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-018-1101-y

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