Farm-gate nutrient balances of grassland-based milk production systems with full- or part-time grazing and fresh herbage indoor feeding at variable concentrate levels

Akert, Franziska; Zeller, Katharina; Frey, Hansjörg; Hofstetter, Pius; Berard, Joel; Kreuzer, Michael; Reidy, Beat (2020). Farm-gate nutrient balances of grassland-based milk production systems with full- or part-time grazing and fresh herbage indoor feeding at variable concentrate levels Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems, 117(3), pp. 383-400. Springer 10.1007/s10705-020-10072-y

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Farm-gate balances for nitrogen (N) andphosphorus (P) were used to determine the potentialnutrient surplus and nutrient-use efficiency of threegrassland-based milk production systems. These wereeither full-time grazing (FG) or part-time grazing withindoor feeding of fresh herbage with low (IF) orsubstantial concentrate allowance (IFplus). Data col-lected over 3 years were used (a) from 398commercial dairy farms, and (b) from a controlledexperiment. On FG, IF and IFplus farms, the N surplus(net input minus net output) was 78.6, 75.1 and 138.2kg N ha-1a-1, respectively, and N use efficiency(NUE; net output/net input) was 0.33, 0.44 and 0.34,respectively. Annual P inputs and outputs wererelatively balanced, with a higher P use efficiency(PUE) found for FG (1.19) and IF (0.97) farms than forIFplus farms (0.57). The most important input sources,apart from biological N2fixation and atmospheric Ndeposition, were mineral fertilizer N, concentrate N/Pin IFplus, and animal manure P. Results from thecontrolled experiment confirmed most of these find-ings. In general, the IF provided an efficient nutrientuse at a relatively low surplus. Accounting for off-farm losses associated with feed inputs and manureexport reduced the system NUE and PUE substan-tially. The large variability in nutrient-use efficiencyamong the commercial farms indicates a clear poten-tial for improvement. The average N surplus could bereduced by approximately 40% in reference to the bestperforming farms in each system.

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL > Agriculture School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL > Agriculture > Grasslands and Ruminant Production Systems
Name:	Akert, Franziska0000-0002-2571-2499; Zeller, Katharina; Frey, Hansjörg; Hofstetter, Pius; Berard, Joel; Kreuzer, Michael and Reidy, Beat0000-0002-8619-0209
Subjects:	S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General) S Agriculture > SB Plant culture S Agriculture > SF Animal culture
ISSN:	1385-1314
Publisher:	Springer
Language:	English
Submitter:	Franziska Akert
Date Deposited:	21 Dec 2020 09:14
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2021 02:18
Publisher DOI:	10.1007/s10705-020-10072-y
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Nutrientbalances, Milk production systems, Grazing, Freshherbage, Efficiency
ARBOR DOI:	10.24451/arbor.13457
URI:	https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/13457