In the era of globalization, agrifood systems do not always evolve towards more sustainable patterns and are caught up in tensions between delocalization and relocalization. When analysing the evolutions of agrifood systems (linked to a type of production and sited in a given area), account needs to be taken of the way in which the changes are involved at different levels: livestock farming systems, systems for processing and distributing agrifood products, and the development of the territories in which these activities take place. This goal supposes that there is a methodology capable of analysing these evolutions. Our work proposes such a methodological framework, more particularly to report the joint evolutions of livestock farming systems and downstream operators in rural territories. It was based on the comparison of four case studies: 3 in France (Vercors and Livradois-Forez for milk production and Cévennes for meat production) and one in Uruguay. This methodological framework, which uses a process approach, is organized to describe and qualify the ongoing dynamics in the joint evolutions of different aspects of agrifood involved in these changes over time. It includes, for an area and a type of production the evolution of: i) the livestock farming systems, characterized by a diversity of breeding systems and collective actions set up by farmers to assert and market their production, ii) the downstream operators, involved in the territory, described by the types of operators and the relationships between them, and iii) the “livestock farming system - downstream operator” interactions. We consider two forms of these interactions: product marketing methods, i.e. the choices of product-purchaser pairs, and vertical coordination modes between livestock farmers and downstream operators, illustrated by the elaboration and implementation of a specification. We illustrate the use of this methodological framework and discuss how, by integrating various levels of actions, it can contribute to understanding the joint evolutions of livestock farming systems and downstream operators in rural territories, and to envisaging evolutions of agrifood systems towards more sustainable patterns.