Ongoing intensification in agriculture has led in many developed countries worldwide to highly specialized dairy production systems, with declining numbers of farms, larger herd sizes, and increasing milk yields per hectare ( Peyraud et al., 2014). According to this bottom-up approach based on field data, improved integrated grazing systems could provide an important opportunity to increase the ecosystem services from dairy farming, operating with land use efficiencies similar to IC. A further reduction was only possible in the IFG (50 kg N ha −1) by accounting for a potential N-carry-over from N-rich plant residues to the cash-crop unit, leading to the lowest PCF (0.6 kg CO 2eq kg ECM −1) for the IFG, with still moderate milk yield levels (~10,500 kg ECM ha −1). However, despite low measured N-losses in the FG system, the farm-N-surplus was exceeded by 90 kg N ha −1. 1.1 kg CO 2eq kg ECM −1) but at a lower N-footprint (9 vs. The PCF in FG were comparable to IC (0.9 vs.

The FG and IFG revealed on average similar forage dry matter yields (10 – 11 t DM ha −1) at similar crude protein and net-energy-lactation ratios per kg DM-intake compared to the IC and SC. Results revealed highest milk productivity (16 t energy-corrected-milk (ECM) ha −1) and farm-N-balance (230 kg N ha −1) in IC however, the highest product carbon footprint (PCF 1.2 CO 2eq kg ECM −1) and highest N-footprint (13 g N kg ECM −1) were found in the baseline system SC. The farm types differed in their share of pasture access and quantity of resource inputs: (i) an IC with a high import of supplements and mineral fertilizers (ii) a semi-confinement (SC) with daytime pasture access during summer and moderate import of supplementary feeds representing the base-line scenario (iii) a FG based on grazed seeded grass-clover swards with no purchased N-fertilizers and low quantities of supplementary feeds and (iv) an IFG comparable to FG but based on grass-clover leys integrated in a cash-crop rotation. To investigate performance and environmental impacts, we compared four prevailing dairy systems using an on-farm research study. However, potential advantages of alternative systems such as full-grazing (FG) or integrated dairy/cash-crop (IFG) systems with regards to better provision of ecosystem services are widely discussed. Intensive confinement (IC) systems for dairying have become widespread during the last decades.

3Grass Based Dairy Systems, Animal Production Systems Group, Wageningen University (WUR), Wageningen, Netherlands.

2Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Tjele, Denmark.

1Department of Grass and Forage Science/Organic Agriculture, Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany.

Thorsten Reinsch 1 *, Cecilia Loza 1, Carsten Stefan Malisch 1, Iris Vogeler 1,2, Christof Kluß 1, Ralf Loges 1 and Friedhelm Taube 1,3

Pure farming milk