An Integrated Approach to Livestock Farming Systems’ Autonomy to Design and Manage Agroecological Transition at the Farm and Territorial Levels

Marie-Angélina Magne,Jean-Philippe Choisis,Julie Ryschawy,Pierre Triboulet,Guillaume Martin,Marc Moraine,Vincent Thenard

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-01953-2_4

Abstract

In agroecological approaches, autonomy emerges as a central concept. It is also meaningful for farmers, for whom implementing the agroecological transition of livestock farming systems (LFS) requires greater autonomy with respect to inputs and the dominant socio-economic and technical regime. How does this concept of autonomy encompass the complexity of the agroecological transition? This chapter provides an answer through an overview of the various approaches used to analyse the autonomy of LFS, as well as a conceptual framework that can serve to comprehensively examine it. Three approaches to LFSs’ autonomy are presented, based on whether they are focused on the flows of material between system components, on the functioning and management of the system, or on the socio-economic organisation and the values underpinning it. Each of these addresses autonomy in its biotechnical or decisional dimension, as well as in terms of three analysis components: embeddedness, dependency, and footprint. The conceptual framework inter-relates these two dimensions and three components, thus providing an integrated approach to LFSs’ autonomy. Its application to two case studies, one on the farm level and the other on the farm and territorial levels, demonstrates its relevance to design and implement the agroecological transition of LFSs.

Highlights

Over the past decades, the industrial livestock farming model has enabled a massive increase in agricultural production through: (i) animals and plants selected on the basis of their high production potential; (ii) the use of synthetic inputs that minimise the effect of production limiting factors and environmental heterogeneity; and (iii) the standardisation of modes of production and the specialisation of farms and regions
The conceptual framework developed here enables one to comprehensively analyse the biotechnical and decisional dimensions of the autonomy of livestock farming systems (LFS). It is based on three main components for analysing relations between LFSs and their territory: embeddedness, dependency, and footprint. This framework, applied to two case studies carried out under the ANR TATA-BOX project, shows that it is initially the biotechnical autonomy of LFSs that is addressed in this research, with the decisional autonomy dimension being taken into account subsequently and to varying degrees
In the first case study, at farm level, the decisional autonomy of LFSs was not studied as such, even though it was taken into account during the first step of the research process aimed at collectively defining what the notion of autonomy encompassed for the farmers

Summary

Introduction

The industrial livestock farming model has enabled a massive increase in agricultural production through: (i) animals and plants selected on the basis of their high production potential; (ii) the use of synthetic inputs that minimise the effect of production limiting factors and environmental heterogeneity; and (iii) the standardisation of modes of production and the specialisation of farms and regions. This study used a functional approach and focused on the biotechnical dimension of LFSs’ autonomy (Table 1) It consisted in analysing farmers’ management and assessing the multiple performances of the LFSs of a group of dairy sheep farms in south-western France (territory of the Roquefort PDO), that were seeking to become more autonomous through better use of the territory’s fodder resources. Type 3 farmers, who have organic farming management, naturally seek to reduce their farms’ environmental footprint by not using agrochemical inputs and by valorising the natural resources of the territory They are forced to purchase feed supplementation to meet their flocks’ requirements, as fodder produced without mineral fertilisation has low yields and nitrogen contents. As Asai et al (2018) emphasised, higher economic and environmental costs with respect to fuel use should be estimated for groups of farmers, due to the more frequent individual transportation of crops, fodder, and manure

A Participatory Process to Examine the Decisional Dimension of Autonomy

Conclusion