Greenhouse gas emissions from food production are measured with a carbon footprint — the environmental cost attached to producing and delivering a thing. A new study has produced a far more accurate figure for milk from Bangladeshi dairy farms, and it is 27% lower than earlier estimates had assumed.
How the study was done
The research was a joint effort between the animal science department at the University of Connecticut and researchers at Bangladesh Agricultural University, published in the Journal of Dairy Science. The team built the figure from data collected at the BAU dairy farm between 2018 and 2023.
Where the emissions come from, on that farm: about 48% from the cows' own digestion, 24% from fertiliser used to grow feed, 20% from manure management, and 8% from the energy used to run the farm. Following standard life-cycle assessment guidance, animals that are not producing milk were counted too. Scientist Elias Uddin said they cannot be excluded, because they are part of the farm's production system.
Why South Asian dairy looks worse on paper
Conventional figures show South Asian dairy farms with a much higher carbon footprint than farms in the United States or Europe, and the arithmetic behind that is simple: a European or American cow gives 30 to 40 litres of milk a day, a cow in a developing country like Bangladesh gives 4 to 8.
But the study found something more useful than a lower number. Over the five years, better management and balanced feed raised the cows' productivity by 63% — and the farm's carbon fell by 37% as a result. Emissions dropped because output rose, not because anything was cut.
That is Uddin's central point: in developing countries the key is raising productivity and efficiency, rather than emission-reduction strategies on their own.
The counting problem
There is a second finding that matters for trade. In the US and Europe, meat and dairy farming are separate businesses. In Bangladesh cattle are raised for both. So only about 50% of total emissions on a Bangladeshi farm are allocated to milk production, against roughly 90% in the United States. Comparing the two without adjusting for that is comparing different things.
The researchers also calculated carbon per unit of calories produced for human nutrition, which finally allows a fair comparison.
What it means in Bangladesh
This is not an abstract result. As environmental standards tighten in international trade, buyers increasingly ask for a carbon figure, and a country without its own data gets assigned someone else's default — which, as this study shows, was wrong by 27% in the wrong direction.
Two things follow. Bangladesh needs this measurement repeated on commercial farms, not only a university one, because BAU's farm is better managed than most and a national figure built from it will not hold. And the productivity finding is the policy: balanced feed and better herd management cut emissions per litre while raising farmer income, which is the rare intervention that does not ask anyone to give something up. For a sector where the argument is usually between livelihood and climate, a 63% productivity gain producing a 37% carbon fall is the strongest case available — and it was made with Bangladeshi data, at a Bangladeshi university, which is the part worth noticing.
