Efficiency and Emissions Performance in Latvian Dairy Farming: An LCA-Based Comparison Across Farm Sizes

The European Union’s (EU) climate neutrality agenda prioritises sustainable agriculture, and within that, the dairy sector is central to food security, rural life, and trade competitiveness. Latvia’s contribution to EU milk production is comparatively small; yet, dairy farming constitutes a structurally important sector that must reconcile economic sustainability with environmental concerns, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource use. Therefore, the research aim is to identify key environmental hotspots and explore the relationship between productivity, economic performance, and sustainability using the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach in different sizes of farms in Latvia. This study applies an LCA methodology to evaluate environmental hotspots and investigate the relationships between productivity, farm size, and economic performance of Latvian dairy farms. GHG emissions from Latvian dairy farms were analysed. Small farms dominate by number in Latvia, but the largest ones have the highest yields and milk quality, and are more economically sensitive due to their high production costs. LCA results show that large farms have the highest absolute environmental impacts—particularly milking and feed production—though the emission intensity per kilogram of milk is lower compared to in small farms. These findings present productivity-profit-trade-offs for environmental impacts, with milking and feed emerging as the key areas for enhancing sustainability.