Analysis of pasture-based- or indoor-feeding-dairy production on the net contribution to human food supply

In a whole-system study in lowland of Central Switzerland from 2007 to 2010 compared the performance, efficiency, land productivity and profitability of indoor-feeding (SH) dairy production with that of pasture-based feeding (VW) dairy production. In the present study the net contribution of these systems to human food protein and energy supply was analysed. Depending on the presumed human-edible fraction, the system VW produced between 6.6 until 11.2 times more human-edible protein and 3.5 to 6.6 times more human-edible energy via animal products than the animals consumed via feeds. For the group SH, these factors were clearly lower but still in a positive range (1.0 until 2.5 and 0.9 until 1.9 for protein and for energy respectively). In addition, protein quality in the animal products was considerable higher than protein quality in the potentially human-edible feed components.