Authors: L. Meskens, E. Mathijs
This paper summarizes the results of a survey of 107 AM (automatic milking) users carried out in four countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany and The Netherlands) to investigate the personal characteristics and motivation of dairy farmers to install an AM-system. Personal characteristics investigated include gender, age, social status, education, number of children, self-declared style of farming, attitude towards innovation, leisure and the opinion of others, and the use of external advice. Farm characteristics studied include other enterprises, farm organisation, grazing system, herd size and labour load. The results show that two thirds of those interviewed state social reasons for investing in an AM-system, such as increased labour flexibility, improved social life and health concerns. A multivariate logit regression highlights that farmers in Belgium and in the Netherlands, who have more children and have had more higher education, who have a slight concern for the opinion of others and who have larger herds are more likely to invest in an AM-system for economic rather than social reasons.
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