Dairy Campus: Living Lab for biodiversity and precision agriculture

This study shows how a modern Dutch dairy farm can gradually create room for biodiversity on 25% of the total farm grassland area and compensate feed production by using precision agriculture on the other 75%. In 2020, we applied a Living Lab strategy at experimental farm Dairy Campus (DC), a modern dairy farm with 500 dairy cows and a home plot of 125 hectares. DC staff, a contractor and researchers jointly developed space for biodiversity by iterative adjustments in business operations, which were based on observation, experience, and experimentation at both DC and the contracting company. In 2022, 31 hectares (25%) of the home plot for biodiversity could thus be freed up. The farm staff ’s mindset turned out to play a key role in realizing this. We conclude that productive species-rich grassland, natural biodiversity on corners, plot edges and ditch sides were relatively easy to incorporate. The necessary precision techniques, RTK-GPS and NIRS, had been adopted before. However, the increase of grass production through precision agriculture at 75% of the total farm plot was insufficient to compensate for the allocation of 25% of a total plot of 125 ha to biodiversity.