Increased production reduces the dairy industry’s environmental impact*

All food production systems have an impact upon the environment, regardless of how and where the food is produced. The effects that agricultural practices have upon environmental parameters are increasingly well-known, not only to the global and national industries, but also to policy-makers and consumers. Increased public awareness of these issues underlines the critical need to adopt dairy production systems that reduce the environmental impact of agricultural production. This may be achieved through the use of management practices and technologies that encourage conservation and environmental stewardship at the farm-level, as well as improving processing and transportation operations to reduce the eventual environmental and economic cost to the consumer. In the following sections we discuss the potential for improved production to act as a tool to mitigate the environmental impact of dairy production.