UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering, Agriculture and Food Science Centre, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering, Agriculture and Food Science Centre, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Sci Total Environ. 2018 Feb 15;615:597-607. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.09.310. Epub 2017 Oct 6.
The Irish agricultural policy 'Food Harvest 2020' is a roadmap for sectoral expansion and Irish dairy farming is expected to intensify, which could influence the environmental and economic performance of Irish milk production. Evaluating the total environmental impacts and the real cost of Irish milk production is a key step towards understanding the possibility of sustainable production. This paper addresses two main issues: aggregation of environmental impacts of Irish milk production by monetization, to understand the real cost of Irish milk production, including the environmental costs; and the effect of the agricultural policy 'Food Harvest 2020' on total cost (combining financial cost and environmental cost) of Irish milk production. This study used 2013 Irish dairy farming as a baseline, and defined 'bottom', 'target' and 'optimum' scenarios, according to the change of elementary inputs required to meet agricultural policy ambitions. The study demonstrated that the three monetization methods, Stepwise 2006, Eco-cost 2012 and EPS 2000, could be used for aggregating different environmental impacts into monetary unit, and to provide an insight for evaluating policy related to total environmental performance. The results showed that the total environmental cost of Irish milk production could be greater than the financial cost (up to €0.53/kg energy corrected milk). The dairy expansion policy with improved herbage utilization and fertilizer application could reduce financial cost and minimize the total environmental cost of per unit milk produced.
爱尔兰农业政策“食品丰收 2020”是部门扩张的路线图，预计爱尔兰的奶牛养殖业将加强，这可能会影响爱尔兰牛奶生产的环境和经济绩效。评估爱尔兰牛奶生产的总环境影响和实际成本是了解可持续生产可能性的关键步骤。本文主要解决两个问题：通过货币化来汇总爱尔兰牛奶生产的环境影响，以了解爱尔兰牛奶生产的实际成本，包括环境成本；以及农业政策“食品丰收 2020”对爱尔兰牛奶生产总成本（包括财务成本和环境成本）的影响。本研究以 2013 年爱尔兰奶牛养殖业为基准，根据满足农业政策目标所需的基本投入变化，定义了“基础”、“目标”和“最佳”情景。研究表明，三种货币化方法，即 2006 年逐步法、2012 年生态成本法和 2000 年 EPS 法，可用于将不同的环境影响汇总到货币单位中，并为评估与总环境绩效相关的政策提供见解。结果表明，爱尔兰牛奶生产的总环境成本可能大于财务成本（高达 0.53 欧元/能量校正奶）。通过提高牧草利用和肥料施用的奶牛养殖扩张政策，可以降低财务成本，并使每单位牛奶生产的总环境成本最小化。
