Dairy production in an urbanizing environment. A system approach in Bengaluru, India

Did you ever see a cow in the middle of the street? In Bengaluru, India, it is a common sight despite Bengaluru being one of the fastest urbanizing city in the world, with now over 10 million inhabitants. In short, the present work aims to explain how and why a cow in the middle of the street is a common sight in Bengaluru. In full, the present work aims to provide deeper insights into the impacts of urbanization on dairy production, taking the dairy sector of the emerging megacity of Bengaluru as case study. The present work first focusses on identifying and characterizing the dairy production systems that co-exist in the rural-urban interface of Bengaluru, while highlighting potential linkages between its social-ecological components. In a second step, the present work focusses on quantifying the impacts of distinct dairy production strategies in terms of resources use efficiency, namely feed conversion efficiency, and global environmental impact, namely emission intensity of greenhouse gasses, in relation to the spatial distribution of Bengaluru’s dairy production systems across its rural-urban interface.