Evaluating environmental effects of the adoption of automatic milking systems in Norway

Elin Martinsson and Hugo Storm

No 321199, 96th Annual Conference, April 4-6, 2022, K U Leuven, Belgium from Agricultural Economics Society - AES

Abstract: In Norwegian dairy farming, the usage of automatic milking systems (AMS) has increased during the last decades. AMS is primarily a productivity increasing and labor reducing technology, but previous research shows that AMS can have other (secondary) effects that could impact the environmental performance of farms. Effects of AMS-adoption found, include increased total production, increased farm size, changes in grazing patterns and feed mix and changes in energy consumption. This paper aims to study the hypothesis that AMS-adoption, through these secondary effects, affect farm-level GHG-emissions. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we provide evidence of the presence of secondary effects and shows that AMS-adoption negatively affects farms’ eco-efficiency, particularly by increasing enteric fermentation. The causal effect is identified by considering adopting farms and non-adopting farms observed at two periods in time. Apart from providing this empirical result, the paper also presents a general procedure of how to go about evaluating farm-level effects of technology adoption.

Keywords: Livestock Production/Industries; Production Economics; Environmental Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24
Date: 2022-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff and nep-env
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aesc22:321199

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.321199

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