Climate change projects commissioned by DairyCo

TWO climate change research projects have been commissioned by DairyCo – ‘A desktop review of greenhouse gas emissions’ and ‘Modelling greenhouse gas emissions’.

DairyCo said the desktop project aimed to find out how individual production systems performed, leading to a second project to develop a model that catered for a range of production systems.

Brian Lindsay, DairyCo head of research and development, said: “We don’t want dairy farmers to make considerable changes to their businesses in an effort to ‘do their bit’ and see limited results.

“We need to understand where we can make the most beneficial interventions from both business and environmental perspectives.”

A third project, due in 2009, will apply the model from these projects to farms and develop adaptation plans.