Abstract
Evaluation of agricultural intensification requires comprehensive analysis of trends in farm performance across physical and socio-economic aspects, which may diverge across farm types. Typical reporting of economic indicators at sectorial or the “average farm” level does not represent farm diversity and provides limited insight into the sustainability of specific intensification pathways. Using farm business data from a total of 7281 farm survey observations of English and Welsh dairy farms over a 14-year period we calculate a time series of 16 key performance indicators (KPIs) pertinent to farm structure, environmental and socio-economic aspects of sustainability. We then apply principle component analysis and model-based clustering analysis to identify statistically the number of distinct dairy farm typologies for each year of study, and link these clusters through time using multidimensional scaling. Between 2001 and 2014, dairy farms have largely consolidated and specialized into two distinct clusters: more extensive farms relying predominantly on grass, with lower milk yields but higher labour intensity, and more intensive farms producing more milk per cow with more concentrate and more maize, but lower labour intensity. There is some indication that these clusters are converging as the extensive cluster is intensifying slightly faster than the intensive cluster, in terms of milk yield per cow and use of concentrate feed. In 2014, annual milk yields were 6,835 and 7,500 l/cow for extensive and intensive farm types, respectively, whilst annual concentrate feed use was 1.3 and 1.5 tonnes per cow. For several KPIs such as milk yield the mean trend across all farms differed substantially from the extensive and intensive typologies mean. The indicators and analysis methodology developed allows identification of distinct farm types and industry trends using readily available survey data. The identified groups allow the accurate evaluation of the consequences of the reduction in dairy farm numbers and intensification at national and international scales.
Highlights
Dairy production emits 2,128 Mt CO2e yr-1 and is responsible for a large share of environmental burdens including nutrient losses to air and water, water consumption and land use [1]
Based on key performance indicators (KPIs) we identified major typologies of farms based on PCA and Clustering Analysis and investigated how these KPIs and typologies have changed over a 14-year period characterized by structural change
Intensification is reflected in higher milk yields per cow, higher stocking rates and increased rates of fodder and concentrate feeding over time, coupled with a decline in labour intensity from 2001 to 2014 that presumably reflects technological improvements and increased herd size linked to higher performing businesses remaining in dairy; this is in line with previous findings that have demonstrated the importance of efficient labour use in dairy [50,51]
Summary
We used all available England & Wales Farm Business Survey (FBS) dairy farm data, providing 728 dairy farms in 2001 (out of a total all-farm survey population of 2845 across all farm types) declining to 432 farms in 2014 (out of a total all-farm survey population of 2447) These data are available under special license from the UK Data Archive [23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36]. Based on KPIs we identified major typologies of farms based on PCA and Clustering Analysis and investigated how these KPIs and typologies have changed over a 14-year period characterized by structural change. The sample was classified with a model-based clustering method that identified cohorts of similar dairy farms. We examined changes in these cohorts (clusters) over the study period, 2001 to 2014
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