Profit stability of mixed dairy and beef production systems of the mountain area of southern Auvergne (France) in the face of price variations: Bioeconomic simulation

Diakite, Zakary; Corson, Michael S.; Brunschwig, Gilles; Baumont, René; Mosnier, Claire

doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2019.01.012

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Like Diakité et al (2019) or Sneessens et al (2016), we found that mixing agricultural enterprises increased average income per farm compared to the weighted sum of each enterprise run separately. In Veysset et al (2014), most of the surveyed mixed crop-beef farms in France did not obtain a higher income than specialized beef farms due to a less efficient use of inputs, except for a quarter of the mixed farms that made economies of inputs (Minviel & Veysset, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…These areas are highly variable between farms. As a consequence, the share of dairy and beef cows should be adapted to each farm structure (Diakité et al, 2019). Integrating crop and beef saved purchased fertilizers and made better use of the straws, which were partly buried in specialized crop systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…was constrained by farm structure. In highly fragmented parcels, dairy cows that had to be milked twice a day often had no access to remote pastures; a constraint on the area that could be grazed by dairy cows was thus included (Diakité et al, 2019). Regarding sheep production, as sheep are lighter than beef cattle, the risk of trampling is reduced.…”

Section: Interactions and Complementaritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The model allocates resources to the different productions considering these complementarities which enable to assess the impacts of specialized vs mixed systems on different components of sustainability at farm level. Orfee was previously applied to several systems in France (Diakité et al, 2019;Mosnier et al, 2019;Mosnier et al, 2020) and is well adapted to simulate French mixed livestock farming systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Does mixing livestock farming enterprises improve farm and product sustainability?

Mosnier

Benoît

Minviel

et al. 2021

International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability

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Mixed farming systems are gaining interest both as a risk management strategy and to apply agroecological principles. This study set out to assess the sustainability of mixed systems compared to their specialized counterparts. The Orfee bioeconomic farm model was used to simulate three mixed farms: beef and dairy, beef and sheep, and cash crop and beef, under 1990-2017 prices and policies in France. Several sustainability criteria were computed at two scales (i) aggregated farm level, to assess whether mixed farms with several integrated enterprises performed better than if these enterprises were managed in specialized farms, and (ii) unit of product or labour to assess whether a product was produced more sustainably and a worker obtained higher and more stable income in a mixed farm. We found that mixed farms had less work peaks, lower global warming potentials and nitrogen balances, lower total production costs, higher and more stable net incomes than if their enterprises were managed in two specialized farms. However, profitability and income variability of the mixed farms were not better than the best performing specialized farm. The consumption of concentrate feed decreased in the mixed livestock farms but increased in the beefcrop farm that degraded feed-food competition.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Interactions and Complementaritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Does mixing livestock farming enterprises improve farm and product sustainability?

Mosnier

Benoît

Minviel

et al. 2021

International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability

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“…Several models have also assessed the resilience of livestock farms through their ability to maintain income stability in an uncertain context (Mosnier et al 2009, Tzouramani et al 2011, Diakité et al 2019. Following this last approach, we assessed economic resilience through a set of properties that reveal how systems deal with different types of uncertainties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of the buffering and adaptive mechanisms underlying the economic resilience of sheep-meat farms

Benoît

Joly

Blanc

et al. 2020

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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The sustainability of livestock systems can be assessed through their productive and environmental performance, the ecosystem services they provide or their resilience to hazards. We used a modelling approach to assess how key economic performance indicators respond to technical and market hazards in five different meat-sheep farms, across France and Ireland. Hazards were related to seven technical or economic variables: ewe fertility, prolificacy, lamb mortality, prices of light and heavy lambs, concentrate use and energy use. We used a mechanistic model to simulate farm functioning and assess farm performance over 3000 iterations, based on simultaneous random draws with hazards to the previously mentioned seven variables. We quantified this way (i) the compensatory effects of different types of technical and economic mechanisms that lead to more stable economic performance and (ii) the probability of economic collapse of meat-sheep farms through a diachronic analysis. We showed that variations in technical variables have larger effects on income variability than variations in economic variables. We also showed that the most resilient systems, i.e. those with the lowest coefficient of variation of net income, are those that combine a low level of inputs with at least two lambing periods per year. Short duration of pregnancy in ewes makes multiperiod lambing possible, which can buffer the variability of technical variables and enhance the adaptive capability of the system by offering the possibility to move empty ewes to a new batch for re-mating. We thus analysed for the first time farm economic resilience to combined technical and economic hazards, and highlighted the buffer and adaptive mechanisms of resilience, with a mechanistic model.

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Can traditional management practices help mountain livestock farms in the Spanish Pyrenees cope with climate change?

Muñoz-Ulecia,

Martín-Collado,

Bernués

et al. 2024

Reg Environ Change

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Livestock grazing systems constitute a traditional activity in mountain areas. They are adapted to vegetation growth cycles in meadows, forests and grasslands, and deliver ecosystem services such as open landscapes, wildfires prevention, biodiversity maintenance and quality products. Climate change poses a new challenge on mountain grazing systems by impacting on its natural resource base. We used the model NODRIZA to evaluate the potential impact of three scenarios of altered pasture quality and quantity due to climate change (optimistic, medium and worst) and a business-as-usual scenario (BAU) on four beef farms representative of the existing grazing systems in the Spanish Pyrenees. We explored the role of traditional management practices (e.g. modifying the grazing season and early weaning) to cope with these changes. Cow body condition score, feed self-sufficiency and gross margin were the indicators of farms functioning. The optimistic scenario improved all farming indicators during most of the modelled period and then declined—still above BAU levels—in the long term. The medium scenario resulted in an initial improvement of farming indicators and a decline to BAU levels in the long run. The worst scenario declined all indicators below BAU levels. The four case studies were impacted in the same direction but to different extent, farms oriented to fattened calves suffered higher impacts than those focused on weaned calves. Traditional adaptation actions succeeded to maintain cow body condition score steady, but they came at the expense of lower feed self-sufficiency and gross margin, becoming impractical to face climate change.

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Profit stability of mixed dairy and beef production systems of the mountain area of southern Auvergne (France) in the face of price variations: Bioeconomic simulation

Cited by 17 publications

References 21 publications

Does mixing livestock farming enterprises improve farm and product sustainability?

Does mixing livestock farming enterprises improve farm and product sustainability?

Assessment of the buffering and adaptive mechanisms underlying the economic resilience of sheep-meat farms

Can traditional management practices help mountain livestock farms in the Spanish Pyrenees cope with climate change?

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