The MilKey project aims at assessing the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of European dairy production systems, and at identifying ‘win-win’ farming practices for sustainable and greenhouse gas (GHG) optimised milk production. These data collection template were prepared to guide stakeholders wishing to conduct a sustainability assessment of dairy production systems. This template covers all the necessary data to assess the environmental, economic, and social sustainability dimensions of commercial dairy farms. Data requirements gathered in this template were deduced from the list of sustainability indicators presented in the DEXi-Dairy indicator handbook.

The template is composed of 5 parts, i.e., Parts I-II-III for the environmental assessment, Part IV for the economic assessment, and Part V for the social assessment. The number of files to fill out depends on the number and nature of additional farming enterprises present on case study dairy farms.

1) Part I concerns the general information that must be collected on all commercial farms. 2) Part II focuses specifically on the dairy enterprise and must thus be completed for all commercial farms. 3) Part III records information about a potential beef enterprise and must thus be filled out for commercial farms that have an additional beef enterprise. 4) Part IV gathers all the economic data and must be filled out for all commercial case study farms. 5) Part V gathers all the social data and must be filled out for all commercial case study farms.

Please refer to the guide for the collection of farm environmental and economic data for the detailed description of all variables included in Parts I-II-III-IV.