Abstract

In recent decades, the rate of milk production per unit land area and per cow has increased with the intensification of the dairy system. The possible environmental risks arising from nutrients surpluses, such as nitrogen (N), are often evaluated using the N balance approach. In Hokkaido, the biggest dairy farming area in Japan, many dairy farms have started introducing a new dairy farming system called the total mixed ration (TMR) and biogas system. Feed and manure are managed at a community scale in these systems while each farm focuses primarily on milking cows. Thus, calculating the N balance for this system is complicated. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the N surplus and use efficiency (NUE), focusing mainly on the community-based dairy farming system, as described above. We investigated twenty dairy farms comprising a TMR centre (TMR-based farms) and nineteen conventional dairy farms (conventional farms). The Hokkaido dairy farms had a smaller N surplus and higher NUE than farms in other countries. The whole farm N surplus and NUE ranged from −163 to 701 kg N ha−1 and from 20% to 171% with median values of 40.5 kg N ha−1 and 69.5%, respectively. One of the possible reasons for the smaller N surplus and higher NUE is a lower stocking rate (averaged 1.3 cows ha−1) on Hokkaido dairy farms. There were strong relationships between feed N and N surplus because the studied dairy farms depended on purchased feed. In the comparison between the TMR centre and conventional dairy farms, the milk production level per cow and stocking rate tended to increase, and variations between farms decreased on the TMR-based farms. Increasing the amount of home-grown feed with pasture management is essential to decreasing N surplus for the new dairy farming systems.

Highlights

  • Over the past 50 years, the productivity of dairy farming has dramatically increased worldwide (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2017)

  • We mapped the whole farm N use efficiency (NUE) results into the conceptional framework of NUE proposed by the EU Nitrogen Expert panel (2015)

  • The total mixed ration (TMR) centre was characterised by higher input and output values than the other conventional farms that were studied

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Summary

Introduction

Over the past 50 years, the productivity of dairy farming has dramatically increased worldwide (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2017). This increase has been achieved by increased application rates of nutrients, nitrogen (N), as chemical fertiliser used for forage production and protein in animal feed (Stott and Gourley 2016, Chobtang et al 2017). To date, evaluating the environmental impact of dairy farming and its mitigation options has been widely studied in Oceania, Europe, and the United States of America (USA; Gourley et al 2012b, Powell and Rotz 2015, Buckley et al 2016). To understand and provide an overview of the environmental impacts of dairy farming worldwide, more research is needed in other regions, such as South America and Asia, including Japan

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