CS - The Economics Of Organic Grazing And Confinement Dairy Farms

Actual farm financial data shows that dairy farms practicing management intensive rotational grazing (MIRG) and organic practices can be economically competitive with dairy farms practicing neither. The data also indicates that MIRG contributes more toward profitability than organic practices do. Organic dairy farms clearly need the price premium to be competitive with graziers without organic practices. Organic dairy data is still relatively scarce. Some of the data used in this comparison came from a project initially sponsored by USDA IFAFS grant project #00-52501-9708 titled “Regional Multi-State Interpretation of Small Farm Financial Data”.

Keywords Confinement, Dairy, Economics, Grazing, Organic