Study of the adoption of greenhouse gas mitigation technologies by EU livestock farmers

Livestock production is responsible for most of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from European agriculture. To achieve the climate targets in the European Union, reducing emissions from the food chain, and within that from livestock production, is imperative. Along with structural changes, management and technological improvements on farms have an important role in reducing GHG emissions. However, our understanding of the uptake of low-GHG practices is limited, with uneven evidence across countries and practices. This report adds to the evidence base on the uptake of mitigation practices by presenting the results of two surveys, one done with dairy farmers in Poland about the use of breeding indices, and the other with pig producers in France about multi-phase feeding. The results provide evidence of the importance of farm size and specialisation in practice uptake, while also pointing to the role of the processors in the case of milk production. The most common barriers are high cost, low return on investment and a perception that the farm is too small to implement such practices. Adopters mentioned the benefits of improved milk yield and genetics and also better knowledge of the herd in the case of the breeding index, and reduced feed costs and nitrogen excretion with multi-phase feeding. Simulations of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the adopters’ and non-adopters’ farming systems showed a potential reduction of GHG emission intensity in both cases, namely 9% for milk production with using the breeding index in the herd and 3% for pig meat production with multi-phase feeding.