Seven contrasted case studies are presented in this study (Table 1) to demonstrate the application of the DEXi-Dairy tool. These case studies represented a wide range of climatic conditions (average temperatures between 3 and 12 °C, and annual precipitations from 490 up to 1614 mm), herd size (from 24 to 185 dairy cows), and length of grazing season (from 0 to 259 days). As for the grassland area, it varied from 38.8 to 100% of the total utilized agricultural area (UAA). A description of selected farms is provided in Table 4 and is completed in Balaine et al. (2023). They were located in the North (FR01) and South-East (FR02) for the French case studies, in the North-West (DE01) and North-East (DE02) for the German case studies, in the South (IR01) and West (IR02) for the Irish case studies, and finally in the Nordland region (NO01) for the Norwegian case study. At the time of the study, the main farm owners were men in six out of seven case studies. Farmers were aged 37 to 69, mostly with formal agricultural education (six out of seven farms). In two cases, the main farm holder had an off-farm job or received a pension.

Seven case study characteristics are presented in Table 1.
The environmental sustainability of 7 farms as evaluated based on DEXi method is presented in Table 2.
Table 3 presents the economic sustainability of 7 farms as evaluated based on the DEXi method.
And, Table 4 presents the social sustainability of the seven dairy cattle farming systems as evaluated based on the DEXi method.
The sustainability tree and the weights of the sustainability indicators are illustrated in Figure 1.
Finally, the aggregated results of the general sustainability of the seven dairy farms are presented in Figure 2.