Effects of investment and labor-saving by free-stall and milking-parlor system on dairy farming in Iwate, Tohoku district [Japan]

"Overwork" has come into serious problem among dairy farms as their scale grow larger. In this process, Free-Stall and Milking-Parlor System (hereafter "FS-MP system") is taken notice as "the labor saving facilities" and it has spread among dairy farmers who feed a large number of cows. But many dairy farmers cannot decide to convert to this system, because it needs an enormous amount of investment. Then the objective of this study is clearing of relationship between investment and working hours under FS-MP system. By the investigation of dairy farms under FS-MP system, the following points were cleared: 1) Under this system, total working hours become longer than under the prior one, although working hours per cow become shorter; 2) To run this system completely, it is necessary to input an enormous amount of investment, because farmers are obliged to introduce other facilities and machines in addition to stall and parlor. As the result of simulation by linear programming and analysis of present value to clarify relationship between "an enormous amount of investment" and "increasing of working hours", the following points were cleared: 1) Under the working conditions of this system, the ideal number of cows is 52. But it is impossible to repay the debt of investment by this number under the present milk price 81.2 yen/kg; 2) In order to repay, the dairy farmers need more than 73 cows under the above mentioned milk price, but if the milk price goes down to 75 yen/kg, they must feed more than 96 cows. Consequently total working hours become more than 7,600 hours. These are longer than total working hours under the prior system; and 3) The enormous amount of investment forces dairy farmers to increase the number of cows, and total working hours must be much longer. The merit for labor saving of FS-MP system is spoiled by a large number of cows in order to repay the of investment