Relationship between milk intrinsic quality scores and the environmental impact scores of dairy farms
Résumé
This study proposes a simplification of a recently published multi-criteria evaluation methodology for the production of milk for cheese manufacturing, focusing it on milk quality traits possibly predicted by spectroscopic analyses and CAP'2ER® diagnostics of the environmental impact of the farms. Milk quality scores were constructed by weighing the health, nutritional, technological and sensory dimensions of milk quality. Environmental impact scores were constructed by combining 6 CAP'2ER® scores in 5 dimensions: greenhouse gas emissions, eutrophication, soil acidification, consumption of space and non-renewable energies and ecosystem biodiversity. The study sample included 15 dairy farms located in the French Massif Central mountains. No correlation has been established between overall milk quality and overall environmental impact scores. High scores for the nutritional and biodiversity dimensions and low scores for the resource consumption dimension, were associated with farms with a high proportion of grasslands in the usable agricultural area, low stocking rate and low productivity per cow. This demonstrates the importance of defining specific priority objectives, on a farm-by-farm basis, in order to drive changes in agricultural practices. The multi-criteria evaluation model tested here appeared sensitive, but it needs to be tested on a larger scale and in different contexts.
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