Local breeds and pastoral farming on the North Mediterranean shore: a univocal coevolution? An example of dairy sheep farming systems in Corsica (France) and Thessaly (Greece)

Lola Perucho,Jean-Christophe Paoli,Charles-Henri Moulin,Anne Lauvie,Ioannis Hadjigeorgiou,Christina Ligda

doi:10.46265/genresj.wuda2135

Abstract

Using local resources for ruminant feeding is a way to achieve agroecological production in pastoral farming systems. In North Mediterranean countries, sheep farming systems have evolved towards more intensive systems in lowland and hilly areas, whereas remote and rough pastureland is abandoned and local breeds are rarely maintained; rather, they are progressively replaced by highly productive breeds and their crosses. Using the examples of Corsica (France) and Thessaly (Greece), two dairy sheep farming territories developing intensive farming systems that differ in the livestock breeds they use, we explored the hypothesis that the use of local breeds may not be systematically related to the maintenance of pastoral practices in Mediterranean dairy sheep farming systems. For this purpose, three data sets based on interviews with sheep farmers of local breeds and crossbred flocks were analysed in two study areas. The results demonstrated that local breeds’ adaptive abilities can be used in crossbred flocks or purebred flocks to maintain a feeding system based on pastoral components. However, other drivers also appear to lead into the declining use of local pastoral resources. Apart from the use of local breeds, year-to-year adjustments of replacement and culling rates sometimes have to be applied in order to address the inter-annual variations of the fodder on offer. This paper provides an original approach to studying the link between local breeds and the pastoral components of farming systems by combining synchronic and diachronic analyses of the practices in crossbred and purebred flocks composed of local breeds.

Highlights

The agroecological transition in livestock farming relies on decreasing farm inputs and increasing the use of local feed resources and farm leftovers to meet the needs of the on-farm production procedure and on grazing modalities closely following ecological processes in order to ensure the renewal of resources in the long term (Jouven et al, 2010; Dumont et al, 2013)
Using the examples of Corsica (France) and Thessaly (Greece), two dairy sheep farming territories developing intensive farming systems that differ in the livestock breeds they use, we explored the hypothesis that the use of local breeds may not be systematically related to the maintenance of pastoral practices in Mediterranean dairy sheep farming systems
These inconsistencies between breeds and feeding systems took three forms: (i) the breed/crossbreed was deemed not hardy enough to function under existing grazing conditions; (ii) the feeding strategy implemented for the breed was considered economically unsustainable; and (iii) the various breeds, raised simultaneously in the flock, had different feeding requirements, but it was not practical to implement a different feeding practice for each of them (Table 3)

Summary

Introduction

The agroecological transition in livestock farming relies on decreasing farm inputs and increasing the use of local feed resources and farm leftovers to meet the needs of the on-farm production procedure and on grazing modalities closely following ecological processes in order to ensure the renewal of resources in the long term (Jouven et al, 2010; Dumont et al, 2013). The results from the T1 interviews indicated that the dairy sheep farmers of Thessaly utilised local breeds in their holding in order to improve the hardiness of the flock (in terms of adaptation to pastoral conditions) and rejected highly productive breeds for their incapacity to do so.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion