The Impact of Management Changes on Discharges to Water and Emissions to Air

This is a summary of two projects that were designed to investigate the cost effectiveness associated with adoption of farm management practices designed to reduce discharges to water and greenhouse gas emissions. The first report had the purpose of expressing the results as the financial cost to the case study farm per kg of nutrient discharge reduction achieved, or per mm of water use saved (per year) i.e., the cost-effectiveness of the measures. This second extension of that work had the objectives to both; further scope the research context and parameters and refine and expand the modeling capability. The full range of 11 mitigation options were modeled over the 5 Dairy, 13 Sheep and Beef and 2 Deer Monitoring Models. The results in terms of Nitrogen discharges (kg N) were then incorporated into farm financial models to determine the impact of adoption of the management changes on farm financial performance. The results are reported as mitigation cost effectiveness of each option on each farm and as a reduction in the carbon cost to the farm.