Mixed crop–livestock farming systems: a sustainable way to produce beef? Commercial farms results, questions and perspectives

Abstract

Mixed crop-livestock (MC-L) farming has gained broad consensus as an economically and environmentally sustainable farming system. Working on a Charolais-area suckler cattle farms network, we subdivided the 66 farms of a constant sample, for 2 years (2010 and 2011), into four groups: (i) 'specialized conventional livestock farms' (100% grassland-based farms (GF), n = 7); (ii) 'integrated conventional crop-livestock farms' (specialized farms that only market animal products but that grow cereal crops on-farm for animal feed, n = 31); (iii) 'mixed conventional crop-livestock farms' (farms that sell beef and cereal crops to market, n = 21); and (iv) organic farms (n = 7). We analyse the differences in structure and in drivers of technical, economic and environmental performances. The figures for all the farms over 2 years (2010 and 2011) were pooled into a single sample for each group. The farms that sell crops alongside beef miss out on potential economies of scale. These farms are bigger than specialized beef farms (with or without on-farm feed crops) and all types of farms show comparable economic performances. The big MC-L farms make heavier and consequently less efficient use of inputs. This use of less efficient inputs also weakens their environmental performances. This subpopulation of suckler cattle farms appears unable to translate a MC-L strategy into economies of scope. Organic farms most efficiently exploit the diversity of herd feed resources, thus positioning organic agriculture as a prototype MC-L system meeting the core principles of agroecology.

Direct and indirect impacts of crop–livestock organization on mixed crop–livestock systems sustainability: a model-based study

“…The ability of MC-L systems to produce food while providing ecosystem services, facing climate change and volatility of commodity and input prices yet has been widely highlighted (Bonaudo et al, 2014;Lemaire et al, 2014;Peyraud et al, 2014). However, we found quantitative scientific studies showing opposite socio-economic and/or environmental effects of crop-livestock interactions (Perrot et al 2012;Ryschawy et al, 2012;Veysset et al, 2014). Those results consolidates the calls for better understanding the effects of croplivestock interactions at farm scale (Parsons et al, 2011a).…”

“…Our result suggesting that integrated MC-L systems are in both case more profitable than nonintegrated MC-L systems -acting as two juxtaposed specialized system -is opposed to those of Veysset et al (2014) and Ryschawy et al (2012) (France). This contrasted result may be explained by the fact that -in our study -farming systems are compared at the same scale of production preventing bias of evaluation owing to the occurrence of scale economies (Dupraz, 1998).…”

“…At this scale of evaluation, some studies focusing on observed data revealed more contrasted effects of integration on environmental performances. For instance, Veysset et al (2014) reported that specialized suckler beef cattle had better environmental results than mixed crop-livestock systems. In the same way, Ryschawy et al (2012) showed that mixed crop-livestock systems generally reached intermediary levels of performance in comparison with specialized systems.…”

“…Indeed, while some studies completely fails to consider the production scale in their comparisons (Parsons et al, 2011b;Ryschawy et al, 2012;Veysset et al, 2014), others take into account both scale economies and scope economies (Morrison et al, 1986;Kingwell and Pannell, 1987;Perrot et al, 2012). However, those last studies -focusing on economic gains or losses -fail considering the effects on environmental and production performances whereas these are crucial objectives for sustainable production.…”

Role of input self-sufficiency in the economic and environmental sustainability of specialised dairy farms

“…Since the Second World War, agricultural subsidies have been based on the output level, which pushed the farmers to consider the gross yield as their main production objective (Vanloqueren and Baret, 2008). In addition, the increase in labour productivity and the process of practice standardisation have encouraged farmers to simplify their management practices and distribute concentrate all year round to enable high and steady production, without taking the quality of the forage available into account (Veysset et al, 2014). Including higher proportions of forage in the diet constitutes a possible path to reduce the use of concentrates without decreasing the output level.…”