2002 Volume 33 Issue 1 Pages 21-26
Most of the dairy farming systems have mainly been evaluated by the economical efficiency. Therefore dairy farmers have tried to improve their productive efficiency for increasing their profit only. Although the profit has been remarkably increased, some other problems have arisen such as pollution by livestock waste and drying up of oil resources. Recent years it is anticipated that the other points of views than economical efficiency should be taken into consideration when evaluating dairy farming systems.
In this paper, multiple criteria composed of net agricultural income (NAI), fossil energy input (FEI), nitrogen load (NLD) and their ratios are proposed to evaluate both a dairy farming system and the manure handling system.
One type of dairy farming system which has the slurrygation (manure handling) system at a free stall dairy barm in Hokkaido was investigated. The ratio of the fossil energy input to net agricultural income [FEI/NAI], which is one of the evaluation criteria showing how much of the fossil energy is consumed to earn 1, 000yen, was 450[MJ/1, 000yen]. The ratio of the nitrogen load to net agricultural income [NLD/NAI], which shows how much of nitrogen is spread to the circumstances to earn 1, 000yen, was 0.43[kgN/1, 000yen]. The ratio of the fossil energy input for manure handling (FEIm) to net agricultural income [FEIm/NAI] was 67[MJ/1, 000yen]. The nitrogen load for manure handling (NLDm) to net agricultural income [NLDm/NAI] was 0.07[kgN/1, 000yen].
Although the evaluation criteria were obtained at only one dairy farming system, we will investigate other dairy farming systems having different manure handling systems, and compare each other.
