Within the Charolais area, the leading French region for beef cattle farming, the western part ofSaône-et-Loire (Burgundy, France) is one of the sub-areas where regional specialisation is the mostmarked. Considering the important increase in livestock since the post-war period, this publicationis interested in the ways in which physical labour productivity has increased over the long periodof the contemporary agricultural revolution (1950 to the present). Based on a sample of interviewsconducted with retired or near-retired cattle farmers, this process was decomposed into a mix oftechnical levels, differentiated according to the social modalities of access to resources. Followingthe presentation of the general movement, an illustration, based on three archetypal trajectories,proposes a quantification of these gains in physical productivity, expressed in terms of the quantityof “live weight of meat” per worker and per year.