Organic agriculture has sustained consistent growth in the U.S. over the past decade, but very
little systemic environmental impact benchmarking has been performed. This study is the first
life cycle assessment (LCA) of a large-scale, vertically integrated organic dairy in the U.S. The
focus of this study was Aurora Organic Dairy (AOD), a leading provider of private label organic
milk in the US. Over the time frame of analysis, April 2007 to March 2008, AOD owned or
leased six dairy farms, located in Colorado and Texas, as well as a milk processing plant, located
in Colorado. Primary data from AOD farms and processing facilities were used to build a LCA
model for benchmarking the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption across
the entire milk production system, from organic feed production to transport of packaged milk to
product end of life disposal. Overall GHG emissions were 7.98 kg CO2e per gallon of packaged
liquid milk purchased at the retail location. The major GHG contributors include enteric
fermentation (25% of total) and feed production (17% of total). The energy consumption for the
entire system was 72.6 MJ (1.65 gallons of gasoline equivalent LHV) per gallon of packaged
liquid milk. Potential strategies for reducing the system GHG emissions are discussed including
wind energy, animal husbandry techniques, biodiesel, photovoltaic energy, and anaerobic
digestion.