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In many organic farms there is a huge potential to increase efficiency in rearing heifers for replacement. This is the result of a study in 36 organic dairy farms with pasture from South Germany, which were analyzed economically in the years 2009 – 2011. In particular farms with high production efficiency and low production costs per heifer show decreased production times per cow for some months, but this effect is overcompensated by higher milk yields per cow. This is one reason why they perform economically better with regard to the dairy farm. The most important factors influencing the production costs per heifer are the costs for forage and labor. Based on the results of this study, more efficient rearing of heifers with lower production costs seems necessary and worthwhile

High concentrate use in milk production disregards the inborn ability of ruminants to convert into valuable foodstuffs cellulose, which monogastrics cannot digest. The present paper builds upon the analyses of 36 organic dairy farms and compares farms with high concentrate use per cow against those with low usage. The cluster of farms with 6.7 dt concentrates performs slightly better economically than those with a higher concentrate usage of 13.3 dt per cow. But the efficient usage of forage is more decisive for farm profitability. Therefore, organic farms should improve their milk yields by high forage qualities and add a limited quantity of efficiently utilized concentrate.

Quantification and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is an intensively discussed topic. For dairy farms many studies consider a higher milk yield per cow for greenhouse gas mitigation but this often results in a reduction in herd fertility and thus more heifers are needed which may lead to more emissions in total. This paper presents the Product Carbon Footprint of 36 organic dairy farms and analyses the influence of milk yield per cow and longevity of dairy cows. Results are: (1) a product carbon footprint of 1,61 kg CO2eq/kg fat and protein corrected milk on average, (2) increasing milk yield per cow causes decreasing product carbon footprints (coefficient of determination 48 %) and (3) decreasing longevity per cow causes decreasing product carbon footprints but to a lower degree of influence (coefficient of determination 16 %). With regard to climate protection, not considering ethical aspects, a high milk yield per cow should be achieved rather than to focus on longevity.

Owing to strongly volatile and temporarily very low milk payout over the last years with operational costs showing an upward trend, organic milk production associated with intense pasture utilization has gained in excellence. Our contribution compares a sample of 38 randomly selected South German pasture farms with conventionally farming top enterprises in the financial years 2009 – 2011. The results obtained demonstrate that in spite of the smaller sizes of the 34 selected firms, organic pasture farms can generate higher hourly earnings than conventionally farming top enterprises thanks to high basic ration performance from cheap pasture grass and low input of concentrated feed with high prices for organic milk. This advantage will even be greater with increasing prices for concentrated feed and/or operating resources if the milk prices are kept at the level of the previous years.