Exploring trade-offs among indicators of performance and environmental impact in livestock areas

Abstract

Assessing the sustainability of livestock production involves understanding trade-offs among indicators of performance and environmental impact at multiple levels (i.e. animal, farm, regional, global). To date, most studies have focused on animal/farm levels. There is a need to move towards a regional level where several livestock species and plant resources combine, along with biophysical and socioecological characteristics. The objective of this study was (i) to assess the performance and environmental impact across livestock-dominated areas in France and (ii) to identify and explore trade-offs among performance/impact indicators. A set of indicators was derived from an inventory of nitrogen (N) flows computed across 48 French departments. Analysis of indicator relationships revealed trade-offs for which spatial decomposition was mapped. At the level of the 48 departments, gains in livestock N use efficiency and animal source food production often compromised other dimensions: N surplus and N self-sufficiency. These trade-offs suggested how unlikely are simultaneous gains in provision of animal source food and low environmental impact (i.e. decreased N surplus). The spatial decomposition of trade-offs showed that a few areas achieved moderate levels of animal source food at high livestock N use efficiency and high N self-sufficiency, along with low levels of environmental impacts (low N surplus and low N excretion emissions). These findings highlight the importance of areas emphasizing grazing, where livestock transforms human-inedible resources into high-quality animal source food with high production performance and low environmental impact. Our results show that improvement of sustainability requires a solution for the regional level in complement to the farm level.