Abstract
Like other developed countries, dairy farms in Japan also have expanded their production size and productivity of milk yield, rapidly. However, such an expansion has brought serious problems worsening environmental conditions, dependence on purchased feed and so on. Thus it is necessary to improve the management keeping the purpose of expanding size and productivity of milk yield.
This study is to clarify the relationship between dairy farmers’ consciousness of management and results of herd performance tests (hereafter, HPT). For this study, the data of consciousness of farm management was collected by interviews of 30 dairy farms in Tokushima Prefecture that have records of HPT every month last year, 2009,done by the Prefectural Dairy Farm Association. This study introduced the AHP (Analysis Hierarchy Process) and Cluster analysis methods. The results of analysis show: 1) the highest priority in the consciousness of management is to prolong the herd-life and then to stabilize the quality of milk; 2) the lowest priority is to introduce dairy cattle from outside the prefecture; and 3) there is a significant gap between the dairy farmers’consciousness of management and the results of HPTs.
