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Large Scale Dairy Farming

Wall Street Journals's Angela Yeoh reports from "Modern Dairy", Anhui Province, China.

We are pleased to have partnered with a major Australian dairy company, who are active in in many parts of the world, including China, Malaysia, Mexico, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, and we are currently engaged on a joint consultancy project in West Africa. The Australian dairy industry is one of the most modern in the world, producing over nine billion litres of milk each year. In addition to satisfying the dairy requirements of its 22 million people, around half of Australia’s milk is exported as milk powders, butter and cheese – Australia is the world’s third largest dairy exporter. Many of the larger farms are now moving to intensive, barn housed cows with the latest world technologies being utilised in waste management, methane conversion to energy, milking systems and fodder production.

There is significant international interest in the Australian intensive farming system, as developed by our partners, which includes:

• Farms of up to 6,000 milking cows housed in barns each holding 1,000 cows,
• The green fodder requirement being grown hydroponically, which not only dramatically reduces the water requirement, but also means that there is no need for the farm to be located on good quality soil,
• Digestion of the manure collected daily from the barns, which includes recovering a significant quantity of water, recovering the methane which is converted to energy sufficient to power the entire farming operation, and providing high quality fertiliser for other fodder and/or crop production,
• Use where appropriate of sexed semen which can ensure birth of up to 80% of female calves, and embryo transplants.