Genetic and management factors influencing cow milk quality and safety

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Food consumption patterns of the Hindu-dominated Indian society strongly rely on milk and milk products as protein sources in vegetarian diets. While urbanisation has intensified the market demand for milk and milk products, it has at the same time put urban and peri-urban dairy units under high pressure due to land and fodder scarcity, labour shortage, and inappropriate disposal of animal excreta. The urban demand for dairy products can only be met in an ecologically and economically sustainable way if animals, feeds and nutrients, and financial and human capital are efficient used. Management strategies to achieve this will inevitably vary between different types of dairy farms and between different localities across the rural-urban interface. The key question of project A03 therefore asks for the factor combinations that allow dairy production to remain viable at different locations along this interface. Departing from the general hypotheses of FOR2432 that the competition for land leads to intensified agricultural production and increases household vulnerability to contingencies and shocks (GH1), and that the diversity of exchange processes of goods and services decreases as food systems become more efficient (GH3), project A03 focusses, in a spatially explicit way, on the relevance of (i) nutrient management, (ii) primary and functional animal traits, (iii) the interactions of animal nutrition and genetics, and (iv) greenhouse gas emissions from enteric fermentation, thereby referring to the concept of lifetime productivity.Our longer-term goal (Phase II) is to develop a conceptual model of (peri-)urban dairy farming that accounts for the natural resources base, the interplay of genetically determined and managerially modified turnover processes of primary into secondary agricultural products, and decisive social and economic properties of the systems and their environment. To meet its goals, A03 will, in Phase I of FOR2432, collaborate particularly with projects A01, B02, B03, and C01. These collaborations will provide first insights into major natural, social, and economic factors that govern the structure and success or failure of dairy production systems along the rural-urban interface.