Pasture-Based Dairies Can Contribute to Sustainable Regional Food Systems in the Northeast U.S.

Pasture-based dairy farms can provide many important environmental and economic benefits, but how much milk can these systems realistically produce? Relative to confinement dairy operations that feed large amounts of corn silage and grains, pasture-based dairies rely more on grazing permanent pastures and feeding perennial forages. These practices integrate more perennial vegetation into agroecosystems and can lead to impressive improvements in water quality, soil health, nutrient retention, and carbon sequestration. On the other hand, confinement dairies do achieve impressive milk output. A Holstein cow fed a total mixed ration can often produce more than 30 kg of milk per day, while pasture-based cows are often producing less than 20 kg. This deficiency has led many to question whether pasture-based systems are a realistic strategy to supply a large population with milk and other dairy products. In this research, we are taking an innovative approach to quantify the productive potential of confinement and pasture-based dairies in rural counties throughout the Northeast region. Our approach combines a survey of rations from confinement and pasture-based farms with data on crop and forage yields from the U.S. Census of Agriculture. These data are then integrated with maps from the Cropland Data Layer and the gSSURGO soils database to estimate crop productivity on different soils and translate these yields into milk output through our set of dairy rations. Our analysis indicates that when differences in pasture and forage productivity on marginal versus higher quality cropland are taken into account, pasture-based dairies may be substantially more productive on a per hectare basis than previously considered. These results suggest that a tradeoff between maintaining high milk production and improving environmental quality may be partially reconcilable in pasture-based systems.