An Economic Evaluation of the FutureDairy Complementary Forage Rotation System – Using Whole Farm Budgeting

Andrew Alford, S.C. Garcia, Santiago Farina and Bill Fulkerson

No 280787, Research Reports from New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Research Economists

Abstract: A complementary forage rotation (CFR) aims to achieve high levels of home-grown forage to complement high performance dairy pastures. An economic evaluation of the CFR technology is undertaken by combining biophysical modelling with preliminary results from farm trials conducted at the University of Sydney’s Corstorphine Dairy. This data is applied to steady state whole farm budgets to compare four alternate or progressive scenarios that might be considered by farmers looking at the potential to increase farm productivity through their feeding system beyond a base farm scenario. A base scenario of a relatively well managed dairy farm in NSW, with 140 ha of milking area, stocked at 2.4 cows/ha, utilises about 12 t DM/ha/year under irrigation and produces more than 16,000 L/ha/year from 6,900 L/cow, achieves 0.9 per cent return on assets. A system with improved pasture management over the base scenario, utilising 15.6 t DM/ha/year and 1.3 t DM/cow/lactation of concentrates to achieve 6,900 L/cow obtains 3.4 per cent return on assets. A production system where pasture and supplement (concentrates) are emphasised achieves 6 per cent return on assets (3.7 cows/ha, 9,000L/cow and 2.3 t DM/cow/lactation concentrates). In comparison the CFS system obtains a return on total assets of 8 to 12 per cent, based upon actual or targeted (best case) forage yield results, respectively. The CFS-based farm business becomes relatively more profitable when scenarios with increased cost of fertiliser, water and especially grain are examined. A production system incorporating the complementary forage rotation (CFS) has the potential to be profitable. However, these analyses are based upon a steady state situation, after the implementation of the systems on farm, and implementation costs associated with adopting the technology on individual farms should be considered.

Keywords: Demand and Price Analysis; Livestock Production/Industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42
Date: 2009-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/280787/files/ERR45.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:nswprr:280787

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.280787

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Reports from New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Research Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().