The environmental impact of cow milk in the northeast of Italy

Abstract

This study presents a “from cradle to farm gate” Life Cycle Assessment on cow milk produced in Northeast Italy. System boundaries consider milk and meat delivered at farm gate, including all upstream emissions. All farm activities were considered. Inputs and outputs required in one year are counted and information about 34 dairy farms are used to represent the production area. Different allocation approaches were used to share resources and emissions between milk and meat. Functional unit was one kg of raw milk. The Ecoinvent v3.1 and Agri-footprint v1.0 database were used for secondary data, and SimaPro© 8 was the main software in the analysis. The following impact categories were investigated: Climate Change (CC), Terrestrial Acidification (TA), Freshwater Eutrophication (FE), Land Occupation (LO), Water Depletion (WD) and Cumulative Fossil Energy Demand (CFED). Purchased feed production was the first emitter, followed by on-farm crop production, animals and manure management emissions. Considering the most debated impact categories, 1.80-2.19 kg CO2eq and 8.84-10.78 MJ represent, respectively, CC and CFED per kg of raw milk. This research could be applied in regional studies on environmental impact of Italian dairy production. © 2015, Faculty of Agriculture in Osijek. All rights reserved.