Dairy buffalo life cycle assessment as affected by heifer rearing system

In the near future dairy enterprises will have to meet increasing environmental regulations. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the effects on the environment of dairy buffalo farming as affected by two different heifer rearing systems, free-ranging (FR) and confinement (C) using the Life Cycle Assessment approach. The primary data were collected from 32 subjects. The analysis included all of the farming phases (i.e. birth to weaning, weaning to 7–8 months of age, 7–8 months to puberty, puberty to first calving, lactation, dry period). During the heifer phase from 7 to 8 months of age to puberty, sixteen animals were group-housed and confined in an indoor slatted floor pen (4 m2/animal) with an outdoor paddock (4 m2/animal); 16 others were FR on a Mediterranean natural pasture. When pubertal, the animals from system FR were returned to the farm and reunited with the animals from system C. We used 1 kg of fat and protein corrected buffalo milk (FPCM), with a reference milk fat and protein content of 8.3% and 4.73%, respectively, as functional unit. Impact categories investigated were Climate Change (CC), Terrestrial Acidification (TA), Marine Eutrophication (ME), Agricultural land occupation (ALO), Water depletion (WD). At category level system FR showed a reduction of the impact in terms of CC (9%), TA (10%), ME (6%) and WD (11%), whereas ALO was 7% higher as compared to system C. In conclusion, we clearly showed that the conduction of part of dairy buffalo farming (i.e. the unproductive phase from 7 to 8 months of age to puberty) on natural pasture is possible and it also allows the reduction of several sources of pollution while reducing the production costs, hence the economic sustainability. Although this system requires a greater use of land, parameters concerning the quality of land use should be included for a more accurate assessment of this aspect.