An Economic and Environmental Analysis of Virtual Fencing for Precision Grazing
通过多目标线性规划模型，比较虚拟围栏与传统围栏在英国两种典型牛放牧系统中的经济与环境表现，发现虚拟围栏在集约化低地育肥中成本高且环境效益不突出，但在高地母牛系统中可支持生态保护并降低碳排放强度。
ABSTRACT The UK grazing livestock sector is challenged by declining farm profitability and stringent environmental policy. Innovative technologies such as virtual fencing could enable a balanced economic and environmental performance of beef production. Virtual fencing is a livestock management tool relying on invisible boundaries perceived as auditory, electrical, or vibrational cues emitted by devices worn by grazing animals. This analysis compares virtual and conventional fencing from an economic and environmental perspective using a multi‐objective linear programming model. Optimal livestock management scenarios are identified for two typical UK cattle grazing systems. In intensive lowland beef finishing, virtual fencing achieves the lowest economic performance and a beef carbon emission intensity comparable to electric fencing. In an extensive upland suckler cow system, virtual fencing enables ecological conservation and reduces beef carbon emission intensity but increases labour input compared to set stocking. This ex‐ante assessment illustrates how precision grazing technologies can be simultaneously evaluated against economic and environmental objectives. The results indicate that, under current cost structures, virtual fencing is unlikely to be competitive with electric fencing in intensive lowland beef finishing systems, where it delivers similar environmental outcomes at higher cost. In contrast, in upland suckler cow systems, virtual fencing can support habitat protection and reduce beef carbon emission intensity but remains constrained by capital and labour costs. These findings suggest that virtual fencing is unlikely to be widely adopted on purely commercial grounds but could play a targeted role in the delivery of publicly subsidised conservation programmes such as the UK's Environmental Land Management schemes.