Academic literature on the topic 'Dairy farming'

India has world’s largest livestock population and 1st rank in milk production with 187 million tons in 2018-19. Dairy farming is the single largest contributors to Indian GDP with 5.1 % in 2018-19 and annual growth rate in Livestock sector is 4.6%. Indian dairy production is characterized as a low input/low output system. In general, milk productivity of dairy animals is very low in comparison to global standards. The lower milk yield is mainly due to low genetic potential, lack of nutritional feeds and inadequate veterinary services. So, with suitable and scientific approach production efficiency can raise. In this context, Precision dairy farming (PDF) aims to improve individual animal performance, well being and socio-economic status of dairy farmer. Today, traditional dairy farming becomes organized commercial business with technological specializations in every part of the process. Thus, farmers are shifting towards adopting modern dairy farming practices for increase their production. PDF is the use of information and technology based farm management system to record physiological, behavioral and production parameters of individual animals to improve management strategies, profitability and production performance. There are so many important precision dairy farming technologies available globally, which are routinely useful for large and commercial dairy farm. In this direction, the authors have also highlighted the status of adoption in Indian scenario, benefits, challenges and limitations of precision dairy farming technologies. Many developing countries including India are in initial stage in these advance technology, but there are tremendous opportunities for betterment of animal and upliftment of animal husbandry profession.

The purpose of this paper is to consider implementation of Artificial Intelligence as a part of Precision Dairy Farming, as a way of processing, analyzing and managing Big data, in order to enable sustainable dairy cattle farm. Increasing the volume of livestock production in the future and measuring the level of environmental impact becomes one of the most pressing concerns. The aim is to evaluate the impact of animal's production level on the ammonium pollution from dairy cattle farm using precision dairy farming technologies. The results indicate significant variability in estimated ammonium pollution from dairy cattle farms due to the animal's production indicating positive correlation between daily milk production and ammonium pollution. The test day records, as Artificial Intelligence application in precision dairy farming could be used both for assessing the ammonium pollution from farms and timely prevention and correction of inadequate management towards sustainable dairy production systems.

Dairy farming is an important discipline of agriculture aimed for production of milk and dairy products. India, being a predominantly agrarian economy, has about, 70% of its population living in villages, where Dairy farming play a crucial rule in the socio-economic life. India is not only one of the top producers of milk in the world, but also the largest consumer of milk and milk products in the world. Dairy sector is instrumental in bringing, socio-economic transformation in India. There exists a great need to enlighten and make the society aware of various opportunities and challenges in the dairy farming. In this context, we have visited SAARA DIARY FARM - situated at Nampally, Hyderabad to observe and understand the daily operations of a functioning dairy farm. The farm houses a total of 40 Cows yielding 3 quintal of milk per day. After the distribution of milk, the remaining was used to prepare dairy products like curd, cheese, butter, ghee etc. The visit to a dairy farm provided us with firsthand experience of dairy farming operations, caring for cows, milking processing and the milk processing. This experience has contributed to personal and professional development and enlightened us with potential career opportunities in the agricultural sector. However, the low productivity per animal and availability and affordability of the quality feed and fodder remains to be the major challenges. In these circumstances, Government should take initiative to promote the dairy farming as major industry to meet the global demand.

Since the 1990s, the number of intensive dairy farms in Iran has rapidly increased to supply milk to the growing cities. As a result, total production of milk has increased, but scarcities still exist in some regions of the country. Since resources such as feedstuffs are limited, and considerable investment will be required to establish these new farms, the question of production efficiency in Iranian dairy farming seems an important one. Measuring the level of production efficiency, determining the sources of inefficiency, and proposing possible ways of improving the efficiency of the intensive dairy farms are the main aims of this study. In addition to simple measures of partial productivities and profitabilities, a stochastic transcendental frontier production function was estimated, using a single-stage approach to measure overall technical efficiency and its components, and a frontier profit function was used to measure the economic efficiency of individual intensive dairy farms. The latter function was evaluated first with the current distorted prices of milk and concentrates as well as the market prices of other dairy inputs and outputs. However, this frontier led to overestimation of economic efficiency due to ignoring input-price and output-price inefficiencies. To deal with this problem, the frontier was re-evaluated with expected prices defined as fractions of the observed prices of inputs and outputs. In order to investigate the way in which farmers combine dairy inputs, an index of allocative efficiency was also calculated and discussed. All the indices were then compared between the farms specified by factors such as herd size, proportion of pure cattle, etc. The results showed that production efficiency of the intensive dairy farms in Iran can be improved by expanding the proportion of purebred animals, particularly in large farms, and by using as much of the existing capacity of farms as possible.

A key challenge facing dairy farming is to meet the increasing demand for dairy products from a growing and more affluent global population in a period of unprecedented socio-economic and environmental change. In order to address this challenge, policies are currently placing emphasis on ‘sustainable intensification’ (SI), i.e. producing ‘more’ outputs and services with ‘less’ resources and environmental impacts. Determining whether or not SI can deliver greater yet sustainable dairy production requires understanding of the relationships between sustainability pillars (environmental; economic; and social) and farm aspects (e.g. on-farm management; and animal productivity) under particular farming systems and circumstances (e.g. regional bio-physical conditions). Trade-offs between pillars and aspects is inevitable within a farming system. Many widely-used assessment methods that aim to measure, scale and weight these pillars and aspects are unable to fully capture trade-offs between them. The objectives of this thesis are: 1) to identify key trade-offs in dairy farming systems to inform greater yet sustainable food production; and 2) to introduce models and methodologies aiming at a more holistic measurement and better understanding of dairy farm sustainability. This thesis assesses the sustainability of French and UK dairy farming systems via a farm efficiency benchmarking modelling framework coupled with statistical analyses. It explores the relationships between pillars, aspects and technical, economic and environmental performance; and identifies important drivers/differentials in dairy farm efficiency. Importantly, it also suggests ways in which farm inputs and outputs can be adjusted so that improvements in environmental, technical and economic performance become feasible. Efficiency benchmarking was performed with the multiple-input – multiple-output productive efficiency method Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). DEA calculates single aggregated efficiency indices per farm by accounting for several farm inputs and outputs which the DEA model endogenously scales and weights. In this work, the notion of farm inputs and outputs was extended to also include ‘undesirable’ outputs (greenhouse gas emissions) and environmental impacts (e.g. eutrophication, acidification etc.) of dairy farming. The DEA models employed belong to the family of ‘additive’ models, which have several advantages over ‘traditional’ DEA models. These include their ability (i) to simultaneously increase outputs and reduce inputs, undesirable outputs and environmental impacts; (ii) to identify specific sources of inefficiency. These ‘sources’ represent a farm’s shortfalls in output production and its excesses in input use and/or in undesirable outputs and environmental impacts, relatively to the other farms; (iii) to position undesirable outputs in the output set rather than consider them as inputs or ‘inverse’ outputs; and (iv) to rank farms by efficiency performance. Importantly, this thesis also proposes a new additive model with a ranking property and high discriminatory power. In a second stage, DEA was coupled with partial least squares structural equation modelling (SEM) so as to develop and relate latent variables for environmental performance, animal productivity and on-farm management practices. The results suggested that the efficacy of SI may be compromised by several on-farm trade-offs between pillars, aspects and farm inputs and outputs. Moreover, trade-offs depended on particular farming systems and circumstances. Increasing animal productivity did not always improve farm environmental performance at whole farm-level. Intensifying production at animal and farm-levels, coupled with high reliance on external inputs, reduced farm environmental performance in the French case, i.e. a significant negative relationship was found between intensification and environmental performance (SEM path coefficients ranged between -0.31 and -0.57, p < 0.05). Conversely, in the UK case, systems representing animal-level intensification (via genetic selection) for increased milk fat plus protein production performed better, on average, than controls of UK average genetic merit for milk fat plus protein production in terms of technical efficiency (DEA scores between 0.91– 0.92 versus 0.78–0.79) and environmental efficiency (scores between 0.92–0.93 versus 0.80), regardless of whether on a low-forage or high-forage diet. The levels of inefficiency in (undesirable) outputs, inputs and environmental impacts varied among farming systems and depended on the regional and managerial characteristics of each system. For instance, in France, West farms had higher eutrophication inefficiencies than East farms (average normalized eutrophication inefficiencies were, respectively 0.141 and 0.107), perhaps because of their more intensive production practices. However, West farms were more DEA-efficient than East farms as the former benefited from bio-physical conditions more favourable to dairy farming (mean DEA score ranks were 97 for West and 83 for East). Such findings can guide policy incentives for SI in different regions or dairy systems. The proposed modelling framework significantly contributes to current knowledge and the search for the best pathways to SI, improves widely-used modelling approaches, and challenges earlier findings based on less holistic exercises.

The main goal of this research was to explore the use of benchmarking in the dairy industry. This includes descriptions of the various sectors in North America where benchmarking has been used successfully on a continuous basis or in research. Benchmarking methods that are currently used in the Quebec dairy industry are examined. An improvement to such methods is proposed through the use of visualization, coupled with interactivity, and with a focus on adaptability and usage. The advantages of such an interactive tool are discussed in light of on-farm decision-making, and a further use of visual slider applications is described to help with parameters of known economic importance.

The inclusion of precision dairy farming technologies in dairy operations is an area of increasing research and industry direction. Machine vision based systems are suitable for the dairy environment as they do not inhibit workflow, are capable of continuous operation, and can be fully automated. The research of this dissertation developed and tested 3 machine vision based precision dairy farming technologies tailored to the latest generation of RGB+D cameras. The first system focused on testing various imaging approaches for the potential use of machine vision for automated dairy cow feed intake monitoring. The second system focused on monitoring the gradual change in body condition score (BCS) for 116 cows over a nearly 7 month period. Several proposed automated BCS systems have been previously developed by researchers, but none have monitored the gradual change in BCS for a duration of this magnitude. These gradual changes infer a great deal of beneficial and immediate information on the health condition of every individual cow being monitored. The third system focused on automated dairy cow feature detection using Haar cascade classifiers to detect anatomical features. These features included the tailhead, hips, and rear regions of the cow body. The features chosen were done so in order to aid machine vision applications in determining if and where a cow is present in an image or video frame. Once the cow has been detected, it must then be automatically identified in order to keep the system fully automated, which was also studied in a machine vision based approach in this research as a complimentary aspect to incorporate along with cow detection. Such systems have the potential to catch poor health conditions developing early on, aid in balancing the diet of the individual cow, and help farm management to better facilitate resources, monetary and otherwise, in an appropriate and efficient manner. Several different applications of this research are also discussed along with future directions for research, including the potential for additional automated precision dairy farming technologies, integrating many of these technologies into a unified system, and the use of alternative, potentially more robust machine vision cameras.

For several decades, the practice of farming in mountain areas has played a key role to the proper management of the landscape, the conservation of the biodiversity as well as the soil protection. Moreover, it has significantly contributed to the protection of those areas from avalanches and fires, while at the same time it keeps reinforcing the local economy, thereby acting as a counterweight to abandonment. The mountain animal husbandry is by definition multifunctional and multidisciplinary. In fact, mountainous farming consists of a complex and dynamic system. The harmony and the balance between human activities and nature requires some of the most precious human skills, like patience, self-abnegation, endurance to handiwork and frugality, to name some, but above all, love for mother nature. These are characteristics that ensure continuity and vitality of the mountain for both humans and the surrounding nature. In Italy, almost half of the total land is classified as mountainous (47.5%). Nevertheless, farmers in mountainous regions (representing 30.9% of the national total) face several limitations. These limitations, linked to the existence of natural handicaps, cannot be easily overcome with investments. For example, in mountains the average temperatures are lower, resulting in shorter vegetative period. Moreover, the excessive fractionation, the major gradients and roughness of the lands and at the same time the lower fertility of soils, create the need for special machinery (often more expensive than those used in mainland farms) as well as increased labor and extra inputs for the farms. These factors can lead to a lower land (and consequently farm) productivity, which can be translated into a limited competitiveness of the mountain farms, compared to mainland. In addition, the difficulty of access and the distance of individual dairy farms from the lowland as well as the fewer processing facilities and their small size, create higher transportation costs and lower economies of scale. Thus, the overall objective of this thesis was to verify some parameters of sustainability that are of great importance for animal husbandry in the mountain areas. The province of Trento was selected as a model area for this type of research. More precisely, we have analyzed the relationship between dairy farms and management of the Alpine pastures, in the light of the environmental value of semi-natural grasslands. The first and second contributions are related to this goal. In the last part a survey was carried out to assess the environmental footprint of dairy farms of Trento province, focusing on innovative aspects of nutrition and management of the animals bred. More specifically, the goal of the first contribution was to analyze the role of the mountain livestock sector. At a first step, data were collected from the Veterinary Services of the province concerning the structures and the management of 395 Alpine summer pastures either with cattle (83 with only heifers and 262 including dairy cows) or sheep and goats (50 summer pastures). All the heifers and more than one third of dairy cows that kept on permanent farms of the province were brought to the temporary farms on the Alpine pastures during the summer season, with a frequency greater for cows of local and dual purpose breeds than specialized breeds (e.g. Holstein Friesian). Of the 610 permanent dairy farms associated with the Provincial Federation of Farmers, we have analyzed the differences between the dairy farms that move/do not move the lactating cows to Alpine summer pastures: i.e. the traditional dairy farms (small and medium size), with tied stall, local breeds and with low productivity, frequently using the summer pasture were compared to modern dairy farms of the same province. Results showed that the practice of transhumance to summer pasture has an important role for the dairy sector of Trento province, although the farmers changed the reasons why they choose to move the animals. In fact, the role of grazing as production support in the summer is relevant just for the traditional small and medium dairy farms, while in all cases it is important to access public subsidies that are undifferentiated between lactating cows, dry cows and replacement. The study displayed the fact that there is still the need to maintain the link between dairy farms and Alpine pastures, giving particular attention to the quality of the pasture management and the multi-functionality of services that can be provided by mountain farms. The second part aimed in evaluating the effect of pasturing of dairy cows on milk yield and quality. To this purpose, a many of traits was considered. Body Condition Score (BCS), milk production and quality, milk coagulation properties, different set of parameters and information relating to dairy processing were recorded and analyzed. In total, date regarding 799 lactating cows were collected and analyzed during 2012 from 15 temporary farms on Alpine summer pastures located in the region of Trentino. The cows were reared in 109 permanent dairy farms. Effects of the breed, parity and days in milk were taken into account. The effects of Alpine summer pasture, and in particular of the amount of compound feed given to cows, were also considered. Information was gathered not only during the period that the cows spent at the Alpine summer pasture, but also before and after the alpine season, with the objective to evaluate the changes due to the environmental changes. Results showed that the summer transhumance had an effect more or less relevant in determining a decrease in production, but also depending upon the breed. Specialized breeds, with higher production levels in permanent dairy farms, suffer a greater drop in production than the local and dual purpose breeds. This was somehow expected, since local breeds have a greater adaptability and lower nutrients requirements. Even the body condition score has been strongly influenced from the summer Alpine pasture. A decline in the first phase of the pastures and a subsequent recovery at the end of the pasture period was observed. Differences between breeds existed, with those specialized breeds showing a greater decrease in body condition. After the return from the Alpine pastures a decline in the percentage of fat content in milk (more evident in specialized breeds) was observed, while the protein content remained constant. Regarding the technological properties of milk, significant differences were found with the change of environment (after the reaching of temporary summer farms and after the return to permanent farms). The major differences for lactodynamographic properties as well as the individual cheese yields were observed between June and September. In summary, this work highlighted the better adaptation of local and dual purpose breeds in the Alpine environment and their good performance under environmental changes as well as the special conditions of the farming system in summer pasture. The last part of this thesis aimed to evaluate the environmental footprint of mountain dairy cattle farms. The study was conducted in a specific area of the Province of Trento. Data were collected from 38 dairy cattle farms of mixed breeds using different farming systems. Data on the general farm management, diet, the production performance, the agronomic management of the surfaces, the management of waste, and the energy consumption were collected. A specific questionnaire was developed and tested to this purpose. This specific questionnaire could also be used for further investigation in mountain region. The above mentioned data were used to calculate the carbon footprint of the herds using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The study included the entire product life, i.e. from production of raw materials and their processing till the final product (the functional unit was the kilogram of milk). All the inputs and outputs associated to the functional unit were taken into account. Three categories of environmental impact of the farms were considered: i) carbon footprint (contribution to the production of greenhouse gases), ii) acidification and iii) eutrophication. The values obtained for the three impact categories had large variability, with mean and standard deviation equal to 1.46 ± 0.58 kg for CO2 equivalent (eq), 27.18 ± 8.34 g for SO2 eq. and 7.91 ± 2.31 g for PO43- eq. per kg of milk (fat and protein corrected). The values obtained are comparable with previous studies carried out in mountain areas. The overall impact was divided between on-farm and off-farm components, and was shared according to mass allocation between milk and meat. Analysis of variance showed that the considered effects of housing (free vs fixed) and feed administration (traditional vs TMR), even if appeared statistically significant for some traits, slightly affected the high variability of the impact categories that can be observed among different dairy farms of the same group. This means that there are margins to mitigate the impact and increase the efficiency of farms with different structures and management. Overall, the results of the present thesis provided with some interesting insights on the sustainability assessment of dairy farming systems in mountainous areas, adopting innovative methodological approaches. Looking ahead, the results obtained from experimental approaches could be expanded on a large pool of dairy farms to identify the indicators of reference for the evaluation of the sustainability and multi-functionality of mountain farms.
La pratica dell’allevamento nel territorio montano ha avuto un ruolo fondamentale per la corretta gestione del paesaggio, la conservazione della biodiversità e la protezione del suolo. Inoltre svolge notevoli positività anche in termini di protezione dalle valanghe e dagli incendi, nel contrasto all'abbandono e soprattutto per lo sviluppo dell'economia locale. La zootecnia montana è per definizione multifunzionale e multidisciplinare. Infatti, spesso è artefice di uno sviluppo più complesso e dinamico, in grado di integrare altri comparti economici quali ad esempio il turismo o il sociale, assicurando continuità e vitalità alla montagna. In Italia quasi la metà del territorio è classificato come montano (47.5%) dove gli agricoltori presenti (30.9% sul totale nazionale) devono affrontare diverse limitazioni, legate all'esistenza di svantaggi naturali, che non sono facilmente affrontabili con investimenti. Le temperature medie inferiori, con conseguente periodo vegetativo più breve, l’eccessivo frazionamento, le maggiori pendenze e asperità dei suoli e allo stesso tempo la minore fertilità dei suoli stessi, la necessità di macchinari spesso più costosi come pure i tempi di lavoro più lunghi, hanno come conseguenze una minore produttività della terra, tradotto in una limitata competitività e produttività del lavoro. In aggiunta, la difficoltà di accesso e la lontananza delle singole aziende dal fondovalle, un minor numero di strutture di trasformazione e le loro ridotte dimensioni, sono la causa di maggiori costi di trasporto e minori economie di scala. L’obiettivo generale di questa tesi è di verificare alcuni parametri di sostenibilità di notevole rilievo per la zootecnia montana nella Provincia Autonoma di Trento. Nello specifico, sono state analizzate le relazioni tra bovinicoltura da latte e gestione degli alpeggi, alla luce della valenza ambientale delle praterie semi-naturali; il primo e il secondo contributo sono relativi a questo obiettivo. Nell'ultimo contributo è stata svolta un'indagine per calcolare l'impronta ambientale della bovinicoltura da latte trentina, con un innovativo focus sugli aspetti di nutrizione e gestione degli animali allevati. Nello specifico l’obiettivo del primo contributo è di analizzare il ruolo delle malghe nel comparto zootecnico montano. Sono stai raccolti dal servizio veterinario della Provincia i dati riguardanti le strutture e il management di 395 malghe dove erano presenti bovini da latte (83 solo manze e in 262 anche bovini adulti) e ovicaprini (50 strutture). Praticamente tutte le manze e più di un terzo delle vacche da latte allevate negli allevamenti di fondovalle della provincia sono portate al pascolo durante la stagione estiva, con una frequenza maggiore per le vacche di razze locali e a duplice attitudine rispetto a quelle specializzate. Delle 610 aziende di fondovalle associate alla Federazione allevatori, sono state analizzate le differenze tra le aziende che praticano/non praticano la monticazione delle vacche in lattazione: le aziende tradizionali di dimensioni medio-piccole, con stabulazione fissa, razze locali e con bassa produttività, usano più frequentemente la pratica dell’alpeggio rispetto alle aziende moderne. I risultati evidenziano come la pratica dell’alpeggio mantenga un ruolo importante per la zootecnia trentina, nonostante siano cambiate le motivazioni per cui gli allevatori scelgono di monticare gli animali. Il ruolo del pascolamento come supporto alla produzione nel periodo estivo rimane rilevante per le aziende tradizionali medio-piccole, mentre in tutti i casi riveste una particolare importanza, la possibilità di accedere a contributi indifferenziati tra bovini in lattazione, asciutta e rimonta. Si devono creare le condizioni perché il legame tra aziende e malghe possa essere mantenuto, con particolare attenzione alla qualità della gestione dei pascoli e alla multifunzionalità di servizi che possono essere forniti dalle aziende zootecniche montane. Il secondo contributo mira a valutare l'effetto della monticazione delle vacche da latte su caratteri produttivi e sulla condizione corporea, nello specifico: body condition score (BCS), produzione, qualità e proprietà di coagulazione del latte, e i parametri relativi alla trasformazione casearia. In totale sono stati raccolti e analizzati i dati di 799 vacche in lattazione, monticate nel 2012 su 15 malghe trentine che allevavano capi di diverse razze provenienti da 109 aziende permanenti. I parametri oggetto di studio sono stati messi in relazione alla razza, all’ordine di parto e ai giorni di lattazione, tenendo conto dell'effetto malga, e in particolar modo della quantità di mangime somministrato alle vacche. Il lavoro ha analizzato non solo il periodo di permanenza delle vacche in alpeggio ma anche prima e dopo la stagione di malga con l’obiettivo di valutare i cambiamenti dovuti al cambio di ambiente. I risultati evidenziano come la monticazione abbia un effetto più o meno rilevante nel determinare un calo di produzione a seconda delle razze. Le razze specializzate, con livelli produttivi più elevati nelle aziende permanenti, soffrono un maggior calo di produzione rispetto a quelle locali o a duplice attitudine, che si adattano meglio alle condizioni di alpeggio. Anche la condizione corporea degli animali è fortemente influenzata dall’alpeggio, con un calo nella prima fase della monticazione e un recupero successivo. Emergono delle differenze tra razze, con quelle specializzate che presentano un maggior calo di condizione corporea. Dopo la monticazione si è assistito ad un calo del contenuto percentuale di grasso nel latte (particolarmente evidente nelle razze specializzate), mentre il contenuto di proteine è rimasto costante. Per quanto riguarda le caratteristiche tecnologiche del latte, si sono riscontrate significative differenze sia dopo la monticazione, sia dopo il periodo estivo con il ritorno in azienda. Le maggiori differenze si sono però riscontrate tra giugno e settembre sia in termini di lattodinamografia sia in termini di rese. In conclusione, il lavoro evidenzia la migliore adattabilità delle razze locali e a duplice attitudine al cambiamento di ambiente e alle condizioni di allevamento in malga. Il terzo contributo ha l'obiettivo di valutare l’impronta ambientale di allevamenti montani di bovini da latte. È stato condotto un approfondito studio sul territorio della provincia di Trento, considerando un campione di 38 allevamenti di vacche da latte di razze miste con differenti sistemi di allevamento. Tramite visite aziendali sono stati raccolti dati relativi alla gestione e alimentazione dei bovini, alle prestazioni produttive, alla gestione agronomica delle superfici, alla gestione dei reflui e ai consumi energetici. A questo fine è stato sviluppato e testato un questionario specifico che potrà essere proposto per ulteriori indagini in ambito montano. La mole di dati raccolti è stata utilizzata per calcolare l’impronta ecologica degli allevamenti con approccio Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Lo studio comprende l’intera vita del prodotto, dalla produzione delle materie prime, alla loro lavorazione e utilizzo finale considerando tutti gli input e gli output associati all’unità funzionale (il kg di latte). In questo studio sono state considerate tre categorie di impatto: carbon footprint (contributo alla produzione di gas serra), acidificazione ed eutrofizzazione, relative all’anno 2013. I valori ottenuti per le tre categorie di impatto presentano un’ampia variabilità, con medie e DS pari a: 1.46 ± 0.58 kg CO2 eq, 27.18 ± 8.34 g SO2 eq. e 7.91 ± 2.31 g PO43- eq. per kg FPCM. I valori ottenuti sono in linea con quanto riportato da altre ricerche condotte in ambito montano. L’impatto complessivo è stato diviso tra componenti on-farm e off-farm, e sono stati ripartiti gli impatti con allocazione di massa tra latte e carne. L’analisi della varianza ha messo in evidenza come gli effetti considerati (stabulazione, libera vs fissa, e modalità di somministrazione degli alimenti, tradizionale vs unifeed), pur significativi in alcuni casi, influiscano in maniera poco rilevante sulla variabilità delle categorie di impatto mentre esiste una rilevante variabilità dei risultati tra aziende diverse dello stesso gruppo. Ci sono quindi margini per mitigare l’impatto e aumentare l’efficienza degli allevamenti, anche con strutture e gestioni diverse. Nel complesso, i risultati della tesi offrono degli interessanti spunti sulla valutazione della sostenibilità della bovinicoltura da latte nelle aree montane, con approcci metodologici innovativi. In prospettiva, i risultati ottenuti dagli approcci sperimentali condotti potranno essere ampliati su un pool ampio di aziende al fine di identificare degli indicatori di riferimento per la valutazione della sostenibilità e multifunzionalità degli allevamenti montani.