That was the message to delegates to the first World Dairy Summit in Edinburgh, Scotland, last week from UK dairy farmer David Homer.

Mr Homer, who chaired the summit, said predicted changes in temperature and even rainfall were much less concerning in many countries but farmers still needed to be active and work with governments as they framed regulations to deal with greenhouse gases (GHG).

The alternative, passive approach could bring significant problems if regulators then developed and imposed conditions that made it difficult if not impossible to continue farming profitably.

The summit organised by the International Dairy Federation brought together more than 270 farmers, researchers and industry representatives from 40 countries to a program that highlighted common problems despite differences in production systems around the world.

It also emphasised that while controlling GHG was a primary concern in some countries, in others that was overshadowed by food security at a time of historically low global food reserves and sharply higher prices.

Rapid economic expansion in developing economies also meant many populations were moving from starch-rich diets to much higher levels of protein – often through sharply higher consumption of dairy products.

Mr Homer said dairy farmers wherever they operate were facing a range of issues as a result of climate change. But he said that made it all the more important for dairy farmers from around the world to work together so that as more information became available they would be better placed to tackle the solutions.

Dr Pierre Gerber from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation said livestock farming cast a long shadow when it came to greenhouse gas emissions.

He said that ranged from the release of the three gases (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) through indirect activity such as manufacture and use of fertilisers on pasture, soil cultivation and fossil fuel consumption on farm and in transport, to the more direct production and release of methane by ruminating animals.

Together these accounted for an estimated 7.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent or 18 per cent of total GHG emissions, about two thirds of which came from extensive production systems with the remainder from more intensive systems.

The question now for regulators in the post-Kyoto environment was how to reduce or mitigate that situation.

Researchers around the world were developing programs aimed at specific issues in their own countries but, as with the proposed legislation, those areas of concern and hence the research focus varied between countries.

One of the problems for pasture-based dairy systems in Australia and New Zealand was the concentration of in the northern hemisphere with their mostly intensive dairy systems.

Some of that work outlined at the conference showed that GHG emissions were lower for intensive dairy systems because of higher milk yield per animal, and to more efficient rumen function that produced less methane in fully-fed cows.

The incentive for farmers in these markets then will be to optimise their systems through feeding regimes that Dutch researcher Theun Vellinga noted could even see them “feeding their cows like a pigs”, bypassing the rumen with protected starch and protein products.

What was also clear, however, was the tight margins that farmers already operate under in some of these market with some noting they needed “something extra” in addition to their dairy operations in order to survive.

For Dutch farmer Kees Gorter that was a manure digester used to produce gas which in turn runs a generator feeding electricity into the local grid.

But Mr Gorter said that required much more than the manure from his own farm and so he now also converted waste from a nearby vegetable processing plant.

Professor Maggie Gill who is the Scottish Government’s chief scientific advisor for agriculture and the environment noted the very complex requirements for data such as life cycle carbon footprints that were translated into kilograms of carbon for each kilogram of milk.

She said the urgent need was for data that provided meaningful comparisons between sectors, to paint the “big picture” so that, for instance, unintended consequences of legislation could be seen.

She said groups of policy makers, scientists and practitioners along the food chain needed to identify and prioritise the key questions, providing the lead for the research and analysis phase by scientists, with the next phase where those findings could be challenged by the original groups.

Peter J Austin travelled to the IDF summit courtesy of deLaval