The expansion of sugarcane for biofuels is a highly contentious issue. The growth of sugarcane area has occurred simultaneously with a reduction of dairy production in São Paulo state, the primary production region for sugar and ethanol in Brazil. This paper analyses different dairy farm rationales to continue dairy production in the context of a dramatically expanding sugarcane economy. Combin...

An extended version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was applied by means of Structural Equation Modelling to testing various hypotheses on attitudes and intentions of dairy farmers towards three novel sustainable production strategies, as well as the influence of organic practices and collaborative behaviours, such as information sharing with supply-chain partners. Data on the acceptan...

Small-scale dairy farming in Bangladesh is constrained mostly due to acute shortage, high price and seasonal fluctuation of energy and protein supplements. Poor economic conditions of dairy farmers do not allow them to purchase adequate conventional energy and protein supplements. Locally available non-conventional energy and protein sources can be used as alternatives, cheaper than conventiona...

A questionnaire-based survey on veterinary herd health and production management services was conducted on 194 specialist dairy veterinarians and 466 dairy farmers. The farmers were randomly selected from greater than 6,000 farmer clients of the surveyed veterinarians. This paper reports these survey findings and the findings of an earlier survey conducted among the veterinarians. The survey in...

Understanding the intentions of dairy farmers towards mastitis control is important to design effective udder health control programs. We used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to explore the intentions of North-Western Ethiopian dairy farmers towards implementing non-specified mastitis control measures (nsMCMs) and towards implementing 4 specific MCMs. Face to face interviews were held with...

Smallholder dairy production is increasingly becoming popular in Jimma town. However, feed shortage is a major constraint to dairy production. The objectives of this study was to assess feed resources, feeding practices and farmers' perceived causes of feed shortage and coping strategies to feed scarcity in smallholder dairy producers in Jimma town, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia. A total of 5...

14 15 In this paper the implementation of a tool was considered, based on Machine Learning (ML) techniques to improve 16 the detection of subclinical mastitis in dairy herds. The analysed population included 71 dairy farms in Asturias 17 (Northern Spain) and a total of 2,407 lactating cows. Four sources of information were available: a) a questionnaire 18 survey describing facilities, milking r...

We apply nonparametric panel data kernel regression to investigate production risk, output price uncertainty, and risk attitudes of Polish dairy farms based on a firm-level unbalanced panel data set that covers the period 2004–2010. We compare different model specifications and different approaches for obtaining firm-specific measures of risk attitudes. We found that Polish dairy farmers are ri...

Factors influencing respiratory consequences of dairy farming have not been extensively investigated to date. To evaluate the effects of barn fodder drying on respiratory symptoms and lung function, a 5 yr follow-up study was performed in the Doubs (France). A cohort of male dairy farmers was analysed in 1990. The initial cross-sectional results suggested that barn-drying fodder may protect dai...

The major sources of variability in net farm income on New York dairy farms over the past 10 years are identified using Dairy Farm Business Summary records. The most important source of income variability is the fluctuation in milk prices, followed closely by year-to-year variation in the quantity of purchased feeds. These results suggest that forward pricing of milk and feed purchases may be e...