National Dairy Conference 2024

Robust Dairy Farming for Future Challenges

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This year saw continued progress on uptake of technologies on dairy farms. We have seen for example a huge shift to sexed semen and use of high dairy beef merit AI bulls. This in time will address a key sustainability issue for the sector. Dairy farmers have played a big part in helping to reduce year-on-year sectoral greenhouse gas emissions by almost 3%, primarily due soil nutrient and fertilizer usage.

Long-term challenges for the sector need to be addressed, in particular on how high performing dairy systems can incorporate best-practice environmental and water quality measures into their routine management. This must be achieved while maintaining progress in areas such as animal performance, health and farm profitability.