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Article Dans Une Revue Livestock Science Année : 2011

Multicriteria performance and sustainability in livestock farming systems: Functional diversity matters

Résumé

Agricultural intensification drastically reduces diversity at different scales of livestock farmingsystems (LFS). This homogenization process leads to environmental degradation and ignores thefact that multiple performance criterions often come in conflict. Taking advantage of diversity atdifferent scales of LFS is a newchallenge to improve sustainability. The diversity is considered hereon a functional viewpoint, i.e. a variety of functions played by individual production entitiesinvolved in overall performance. The objective of this study was to examine how the diversity ofindividual production entities shapes the relationship between different performance criterions atthe upper scale. We used two types of dynamic models representing contrasting LFS: extensivegrasslandsuckling farmsand intensive dairy herds. Bothmodels include a certain level of functionaldiversity with production entities corresponding to different types of management practices(grassland farmmodel) or different types of females (herdmodel). With the grassland farmmodel,we studied how the biodiversity/production relationship was influenced by the functionaldiversity of management practices.With the herd model, we explored how production/efficiencyrelationship was influenced by the functional diversity of females. At the farm scale, we showedthat interactions between the diverse management practices shaped the relationship betweenecological and productive performance from a convex to a concave trade-off. Complementaryeffects resulting fromthe diversity ofmanagement practices thus improved the trade-off. Trade-offshape also depended on the level of farmintensity and itwas less costly for the extensive farms toachieve viable levels of ecological performance. Increasing the complementary effect throughincreased diversity in management practices is likely to improve the conciliation betweenproductive and ecological performance. At the herd scale, we observed a win-win situationbetween production and efficiency. However, at the highest levels of production, there was aproduction/efficiency trade-off; increases in either production or efficiency corresponded todistinct functional groups of females. Managing the functional groups of females with targetedpractices is likely to improve the production/efficiency trade-off. We concluded from both casestudies that functional diversity plays a key role in the relationship between multiple performancecriterions. The next steps on the research agenda include exploring newspatial andtemporal scalesand accounting for environmental variability. A better understanding of the role of functionaldiversity can benefit from multi-criterions and multi-scale modelling approaches.

Dates et versions

hal-01000359 , version 1 (04-06-2014)

Identifiants

Citer

Muriel M. Tichit, Laurence Puillet, Rodolphe Sabatier, Félix F. Teillard d'Eyry. Multicriteria performance and sustainability in livestock farming systems: Functional diversity matters. Livestock Science, 2011, 139 (1-2), pp.161-171. ⟨10.1016/j.livsci.2011.03.006⟩. ⟨hal-01000359⟩
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