Potential to reduce climate impact with digitalisation in agriculture: literature review and a case study of milk

The agricultural sector in Sweden needs to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Digitalisation has the potential to contribute to this reduction. The term digitalisation is used to describe a process for digital transformation of products and processes. The purpose is to enable better decisions by using an increased insight through collecting data, and to process the collected data using different smart algorithms.In this report, we present a literature review on research of the potential to reduce climate impact with digitalisation in agriculture. The result of the literature review was applied on a case study, where different scenarios with varying degrees of digitalisation were tested to quantify possible reductions in GHG emissions when introducing digitalisation techniques at a Swedish dairy farm.The results shows that implementation of various digitalisation technologies at a Swedish dairy farm has a potential to reduce the carbon footprint of Swedish milk by 16 %. Precision livestock farming shows the largest potential with an estimated reduction of 14 %, primarily due to feed efficiency and improved animal health and longevity, reducing the total number of animals while maintaining high milk output. It is however important to evaluate the whole system, as changes in the dairy system might impact other farms and food producing systems. This indicates a need for research to further investigate the potential GHG reduction when introducing digitalisation in agriculture.