Holistic Approach to Sustainable Design of a Modern Dairy Farm

Abstract

In a society increasingly driven by large scale industries, sustainable systems must be created in order to counter massive energy usage often inherent in such systems. This thesis aims to create a precedent for conceptualizing the design of modern residential dairy farms by using insight from dairy farm systems from preindustrial times. This representative example suggests a new perspective for examining ways in which energy distribution and waste in modern farms can be examined, and thus may uncover ways in which modern farms can benefit from implementing less energy-dependent technologies and reduce overall energy waste and usage, while still maximizing production effciency. Using the preindustrial mindset based on low energy demands will thus help to re-frame the approach of dairy farm design by considering potential advantages of small scale systems. This modeling approach can be used to design and improve small scale farms, encourage the implementation of sustainable systems, as well as provide a holistic and comparative design approach by which developing countries can transition from small farms to large agricultural industries, which is a trending issue in many third world nations.