The average water use across farms is therefore 911 litres of water per litre of milk. The main point I would like to make though is that the water use efficiency varies between the different farm systems.
The SWAN system is composed of soil, water, atmosphere and nutrient components. The best way to show how these integrated and interrelated measures reflect the journey of improving agricultural sustainability is to show a case study of a farm which has become more sustainable over the past five years.
To become more sustainable, dairy farms should aim to maximise productivity at a minimum cost to the environment. Standard environmental impact measures were combined with non-parametric total factor productivity analysis to investigate if this is possible in a pasture-based production system.
For pasture-based dairy farming to become more sustainable, the negative environmental impacts associated with milk production must be minimized.
This article will demonstrate that milk flocculation is caused by calcium instability which is induced by excess potassium on pasture systems. Also contributing is rumen pH fluctuations caused by rumen acidity or alkalinity due to sudden nutritional changes.
A healthy agro-ecosystem contributes both directly and indirectly to agricultural production, and more emphasis should be placed on restoring and maintaining healthy agro-ecosystems.
On pasture-based farms, the roughage grown on pastures is the predominant feed source. It is therefore most beneficial to grow and utilise these pastures effectively.
There is a lot more nutrient cycling taking place than just what is put into the soil through fertiliser, and taken out in grass and eventually milk. In order to develop a more efficient nutrient cycling system, farmers have to take into account the various losses and sources of nutrients.
Soil respiration has been extensively promoted as a simple, holistic measure of microbial activity in the soil. Simply capture and measure the amount of carbon dioxide produced by soil and you will have an idea of the metabolic activity of the life in the soil.
Active carbon is the part of soil organic matter that is readily available as an energy source for soil life. It is a very good indicator of soil health, responding much faster to changes in management practices than most other indicators.