Grazing practices in three European countries: results of a survey in dairy farms

Grassland plays an important role in mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from the agricultural sector by sinking carbon (Soussana et al., 2010). Thus grazing is often essential for maintenance of grassland. Furthermore grazing has demonstrated positive effects on animal welfare, production costs, landscape and biodiversity. However grazing is decreasing in most European countries. For the project Life Dairyclim, a survey was led in the three partner countries for a better understanding of grazing practices and of perceptions and expectations of dairy farmers. A questionnaire was thus sent in dairy farms of South-Belgium (BE), Luxembourg (LU) and Denmark (DK). From 1439 filled forms, 1147 declared that lactating cows grazed (80%) but this result reflects different situations: 95% LC were grazing in BE while this percentage dropped to 83% in LU and 37% in DK. This lower % of LC seemed to be linked to larger farm surface, bigger herd size and increased milk yield. The opinion about benefits of grazing depended on the grazing practices. Grazing farmers were very convinced about beneficial effects of grazing on animal welfare (95.4%) and on landscape preservation (86.1%). Surprisingly the positive effect on environment was mentioned in only 61.3% forms and even a negative impact was cited in 16.6%. Eighty six % of surveyed farmers expected to continue grazing.