Department of Global Value Chains and Trade, Faculty of Agribusiness and Commerce, Lincoln University, Lincoln 7647, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Department of Global Value Chains and Trade, Faculty of Agribusiness and Commerce, Lincoln University, Lincoln 7647, Christchurch, New Zealand.
J Dairy Sci. 2020 Feb;103(2):1598-1607. doi: 10.3168/jds.2018-16039. Epub 2019 Nov 20.
Although previous studies have investigated the effects of production intensification on farm economic performance and production efficiency in the dairy sector, knowledge is currently lacking on how intensification is related to farmer activities directed toward animal health outcomes. This study addresses the gap in the literature. A fixed-effects model estimated with a panel data set from New Zealand dairy farms is used to analyze the relationship between feed use intensification and animal health expenditure, controlling for a range of confounding effects. The empirical results show that, on average, feed use intensification is associated with a statistically significant increase in health expenditure per cow, and the positive effect is due primarily to the expenditure patterns of the farmers who have adopted the most intensive farming systems. The results also indicate that profitability, as measured by cash surplus, did not appear to be significantly related to the level of animal health expenditure on New Zealand dairy farms between 2005 and 2014.
尽管先前的研究已经调查了生产集约化对奶牛养殖领域的农场经济绩效和生产效率的影响，但目前对于集约化与农民为改善动物健康状况而采取的活动之间的关系还知之甚少。本研究旨在填补这一文献空白。本文使用来自新西兰奶牛场的面板数据集，采用固定效应模型进行估计，分析了在控制一系列混杂效应的情况下，饲料使用集约化与动物健康支出之间的关系。实证结果表明，平均而言，饲料使用集约化与每头牛的健康支出呈统计学上显著正相关，并且这种积极影响主要归因于采用最集约化养殖系统的农民的支出模式。结果还表明，2005 年至 2014 年间，以现金盈余衡量的盈利能力似乎与新西兰奶牛场的动物健康支出水平没有显著关系。
