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Organic farming has long been proposed as a more environmentally friendly alternative to conventional agriculture, but new research has identified its negative impact on climate, citing the significantly greater area required for organic agriculture (Tal, 2018). This ambiguity surrounding the relative climate impact of conventional and organic agriculture motivates us to investigate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions impact of conventional and organic dairy production in farms throughout Northern Europe.
Why dairy production? Milk production constitutes 4% of anthropogenic emissions worldwide (FAO, 2010 in Dutreuil et al, 2014) and at dairy farm level, it is the primary contributor to GHG emissions.
With approximately 200 million tonnes of cow milk produced in 2017 in Europe, demand for milk continues to grow rapidly and milk consumption is expected to double by 2050 compared to 2000 due to projected population growth and rising incomes (FAO, 2006b).
What is organic farming? “Organic agriculture is a holistic production management system which promotes and enhances agroecosystem health” (i.e. biodiversity and soil biological activity) (FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission, 1999).
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In the EU, organic food production systems: ban the use of chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and genetically modified organisms, severely restrict the use of antibiotics, have a rotating crop system, use on-site resources such as manure for fertilizer, and livestock are raised in a free range environment.
Sources of GHG emissions? GHG emissions in dairy production systems include methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2). At farm gate, methane is mainly produced by ruminants’ enteric fermentation and is small part by manure storage.
The majority of the N2O is produced in soil, caused by applying manure and chemical fertilizers to feed crops, but significant shares also originate from production of synthetic N-fertilisers and indirect emissions from the volatilisation of ammonia (NH3) and leaching of nitrate (NO3). Lastly, CO2 is emitted when fossil fuels are combusted for energy used for fertilization, field operations, drying, and processing of feed crops and fodder.
The objective of this study is to find out if there are differences in GHG emissions on conventional and organic dairy farms in Northern Europe?
In order to assess GHG emissions from conventional and organic dairy production existing literature was reviewed. Literature for further analysis was selected from two main criteria. First was the need for studies conducted under similar climatic conditions, as these were expected to influence farming practises, thus GHG emissions. Second was the need for studies with comparable results. Five different studies were identified, with similar climatic conditions, and cradle-to-farmgate results.
The identified results of the five case studies examined are presented in Table 1. The numbers of total CO2-equivalent emissions per kg of energy corrected milk (ECM) only vary marginally within most studies. In contrast, total CO2-equivalent emissions per hectare (ha) vary significantly within studies. On average, emissions values per production unit are smaller in organic farms (1,19 kg CO2-eq./kg ECM) than in conventional farms (1,21 kg CO2-eq./kg ECM). But when it comes to CO2 emissions per land area conventional farms (12.194,8 kg CO2-eq./ha) emit on average nearly double the amount of organic farms (6.871,8 kg CO2-eq./ha). As can be seen in Table 1, the results of the studies differ significantly from each other. The differences in the results are discussed in the next section.
The high differences in CO2-equivalent emissions per ha result from the higher total land use area in organic diary farming (Kristensen et al., 2011). Thus, conventional farms have less hectares per cow and CH4, NH3, and N2O emissions per hectare are higher due to higher livestock density (Cederberg & Flysjö, 2004).
The differences between countries and studies result from different farming and management techniques in different regions of Europe (Olesen et al., 2006; Guerci et al., 2013) and different methodologies and models applied, e.g. Frank et al. (2014) used the model REPRO, Guerci et al. (2013), Kristensen et al. (2011), and Thomassen et al. (2008) used a cradle-to-farm-gate LCA approach, also Cederberg and Flysjö (2004) did a Life Cycle Inventory. Furthermore, different methane conversion factors for converting CH4 into CO2-equivalents could have caused differing results. Cederberg and Flysjö (2004) weighted CH4 by the conversion factor CH4 = 21 CO2-equivalents whereas Kristensen et al. (2011) used a conversion factor of 25 for CH4. Moreover, possible calculation errors cannot be excluded as e.g. the correct calculation of NH3 emissions is very difficult (Cederberg and Flysjö, 2004). Lastly, the results are restricted to a certain number of farms so there might be local variations.
This work focused only on the differences in GHG emissions of organic and conventional farms but there are many more differences in impacts of these two farming systems like lower impacts on biodiversity loss and more animal welfare on organic farms (Guerci et al., 2013) or a high surplus of nitrogen on conventional farms (Muller et al., 2017). Lastly, as organic farms produce lower yields, discussions on a wide-range conversion of conventional to organic agriculture also rise questions of food security (Feuerbacher et al., 2018) unless approximately 35% more land could be utilized for dairy farming.
Even though the GHG emissions from milk production are affected by different factors, all five studies exhibited the same tendency. There is no significant difference in GHG emissions from organic and conventional dairy farming per kg ECM produced. Contrary, GHG emissions per hectare are significantly higher for conventional farming, mainly due to the significantly higher output. Thus, a change from conventional to organic dairy farming is not about decreasing emissions per ECM, other decisive factors could be biodiversity or animal welfare. Regarding food security issues could arise from a shift to 100% organic dairy farming, as the amount of arable land is finite.
GHG Emissions: Organic vs. Conventional Dairy Farming in Northern Europe. (2024, Feb 23). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/document/ghg-emissions-organic-vs-conventional-dairy-farming-in-northern-europe
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