Analyzing work organization on livestock farm by the Work Assessment Method

Abstract

All over the world, farmers have to face up to increasing uncertainties (market and climate). They have to adapt their activity to the new contexts and challenges of livestock farming (producing more and better, and satisfying the expectations of society, consumers, and of downstream operators), while at the same time responding to their own expectations in terms of income, quality of life, and working conditions. In order to understand these changes and consider the future, work organization must be taken into account. The Work Assessment Method, developed by French livestock researchers, provides a framework able to capture work organization, taking into account the specifics of the livestock activity. Based on a comparative analysis of nine case studies that used the Work Assessment Method from six contrasted countries, this review (1) gives generic ideas on work organization indicators and their variation; (2) identifies four generic patterns of work organization which are not linked to the local context but marked by the workforce composition; (3) demonstrates that the relevance of the Work Assessment Method to tackle work issues, and its capacities to be adapted to a variety of livestock farming contexts throughout the world, is linked to the properties of its framework, which was developed by combining different disciplinary approaches; (4) highlights the principal limits of the method: lack of coordination with other dimensions of work (labor productivity; sense of the job), and limited characterization of the work organization flexibility; and (5) proposes some possibilities of change to better respond to the diversity of work situations and questions about work, and take better into account the evolutions of livestock farming systems.

Livestock farmers’ working conditions in agroecological farming systems. A review

“…Studying working conditions is complex as these conditions are themselves determined by multiple dimensions (e.g., work environment, nature of the job, balance between work and personal life, professional relations, health) (e.g., Kling-Eveillard et al 2012;Dumont and Baret 2017;Servière et al 2019b). Different indicators are used to analyze working conditions, for example, work duration, work organization (Cournut et al 2018a), and labor productivity (Aubron et al 2016). To understand farmers' working conditions, one must consider not only quantifiable dimensions (e.g., the length of working days) but also dimensions that can explain how working conditions are experienced by workers (e.g., by understanding farmer's reasons for acting) (Kling-Eveillard et al 2012).…”

How agroecological farming practices reshape cattle farmers’ working conditions

“…This in order to understand, in that context, the nature of piloting activities, work organization and the sources of pleasure derived from work and the relations and trade-offs that are being made between the different dimensions constituting working conditions. Compared to other approaches, the tested framework does not allow to quantify changes in working conditions or typologies for comparison between farm systems as can be proposed by certain approaches of farm work (Cournut et al 2018a;Hostiou and Dedieu 2012). Nor does it allow a detailed understanding of farmers' activity (Guérin et al 2006).…”

Transversal views on work in agriculture

“…This framework was developed in two different ways but the objectives remained consistent. The first focused on a timequantitative approach to work, linked to who is doing what, offering indicators of work efficiency and the flexibility of the remaining time available to work organisers (see Cournut et al, 2018). The other characterised the daily form of organisation (who does what, and according to which hierarchy, including private/non-farming activities), adaptations due to the weather, workforce availability (holidays, meetings off the farm), productive events (wintering, harvesting, etc.)…”