Sustainable Water Use Considering Three Hungarian Dairy Farms

Abstract

Sustainable water management is one of the biggest challenges in the 21st century as availability of fresh water resources is under depletion. Growing population, extreme weather conditions (drought, fire, flood), and increasing global food demand all result in higher water consumption by humans. Assessing qualitative and quantitative deterioration of fresh water supplies is crucial in water scarcity areas. By identifying blue, green and grey water components, water use can be assessed in a more comprehensive way. Water use assessment on a dairy farm is influenced by several factors such as chosen breed, herd size, keeping, feeding and milking technology. Productivity level of milking cows, amount of daily milking and type of litter (straw or liquid manure) have impact on water use by technology and cattle. If these factors are assessed and their proportion within the total water use is identified or calculated, dairy farmers are able to analyze water management precisely and shift to more sustainable solutions. The aim of this research is to analyze and to compare the impact of different keeping systems, i.e., traditional and modern, and milking technologies, i.e., robotic milking system, parallel and polygon parlors, on the water use of dairy farms to give a guide to dairy experts and to find opportunities where water recycling/reuse might be applicable.