Environmental performances of three Sardinian dairy sheep production systems at different levels of intensity

Within the CAP "greening" reform process, the optimization of environmental performances is acrucial factor to improve the competitiveness of small and medium farms, especially in marginal ruralareas. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most advanced and complete computational tool forproviding a widespread knowledge on the environmental aspects associated with products orproduction processes. This paper illustrates an LCA study carried out to assess the environmentalimpacts of sheep milk production obtained in three different dairy farms located in North-WesternSardinia, Italy. The main goals of the analysis were (i) to compare the performances of three sheepmilk production systems at different levels of intensity, and (ii) to identify the hotspots to improve theenvironmental performances of each farm. The analysis was conducted using two different functionalunits: 1 kg of Fat and Protein Corrected Milk and 1 ha of Utilized Agricultural Area. The life cyclewas assessed "from cradle to gate", including all the input and output related to sheep breeding andusing farm-specific data for year 2011. The potential impacts associated with milk production werequantified using three different impact assessment methods. In addition, some options for improvingthe environmental performances of each farm were identified: for all farms, changing power supplystrategy; for semi-intensive and intensive farms, using locally-produced feed and increasing the use ofpasture resources; for extensive and semi-intensive farms, rethinking on size and number ofagricultural machineries.