Quantitative sustainability assessment applied to dairy farms

This study examines the sustainability performance of dairy farms based on water use and energy consumption. In this sense, it uses a multi-indicator modeling approach to evaluate the performance of 30 dairy farms in Khorasan Razavi Province (Iran). The study makes a Sustainability Indicator (SI) using renewable energy, energy intensity, and water usage, which are all considered as the main goal, and SI was obtained using the arithmetic mean of all. This study finds that the value of SI across all farms is about 0.59, which indicates that the sustainability indicator of dairy farms is low in this area. Therefore, it implies that to increase the sustainability level of dairy farms, the water and energy consumption must be managed and optimized.