Innovative and muttiperformance systems rooted in synergies between crop and livestock farming
Résumé
At the local scale, numerous initiatives exist for promoting synergies between crop and livestock farming, which can achieve greater consistency among mixed crop-livestock systems. Here, five farmers provide accounts of the different tools they used to pursue this goal on their farms or at larger scales, incorporating livestock farming reduces the money spent on inputs (e.g., crops can be fertilised via manure and/or legumes). Crop and forage diversification is common (e.g., longer rotations that include legumes and/or mixed forage; utilisation of intermediate crops and the byproducts of cash crops). Such diversity is beneficial because it adds to biodiversity and expands marketing channels. Livestock farmers have been able to take advantage of the increasingly complex situation to achieve a better distribution of their workloads.