Sustainability of pasture-based livestock farming systems in the European Mediterranean context: Synergies and trade-offs

Bernués, A.; Ruíz, R.; Olaizola, A. M.; Mata, Daniel Villalba; Casasús, I.

doi:10.1016/j.livsci.2011.03.018

Cited by 311 publications

(270 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

193

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Evolution in a changing context Input self-sufficiency has often been considered as interesting to promote farm sustainability, faced with an increase in energy and input costs (López-Ridaura et al, 2002;Bernués et al, 2011;Ripoll-Bosch et al, 2012). In addition, Raveau (2011) found that when product prices increased, as in 2007, autonomous farms had more latitude for increasing their production, through increasing the use of inputs.…”

Section: Discussion and Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several authors agree that increasing self-sufficiency provides one way to develop more sustainable agricultural systems in such an uncertain context (López-Ridaura et al, 2002;Vilain, 2008;Bernués et al, 2011). Broadly defined, self-sufficiency is 'the capacity of the system to regulate and control its interaction with the environment' .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

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

Lebacq

Baret

Stilmant

2015

Animal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Increasing input self-sufficiency is often viewed as a target to improve sustainability of dairy farms. However, few studies have specifically analysed input self-sufficiency, by including several technical inputs and without only focussing on animal feeding, in order to explore its impact on farm sustainability. To address this gap, our work has three objectives as follows: (1) identifying the structural characteristics required by specialised dairy farms located in the grassland area to be self-sufficient; (2) analysing the relationships between input self-sufficiency, environmental and economic sustainability; and (3) studying how the farms react to a decrease in milk price according to their self-sufficiency degree. Based on farm accounting databases, we categorised 335 Walloon specialised conventional dairy farms into four classes according to their level of input self-sufficiency. To this end, we used as proxy the indicator of economic autonomy -that is, the ratio between costs of inputs related to animal production, crop production and energy use and the total gross product. Classes were then compared using multiple comparison tests and canonical discriminant analysis. A total of 30 organic farms -among which 63% had a high level of economic autonomy -were considered separately and compared with the most autonomous class. We showed that a high degree of economic autonomy is associated, in conventional farms, with a high proportion of permanent grassland in the agricultural area. The most autonomous farms used less input -especially animal feeding -for a same output level, and therefore combined good environmental and economic performances. Our results also underlined that, in a situation of decrease in milk price, the least autonomous farms had more latitude to decrease their input-related costs without decreasing milk production. Their incomes per work unit were, therefore, less impacted by falling prices, but remained lower than those of more autonomous farms. In such a situation, organic farms kept stable incomes, because of a slighter decrease in organic milk price. Our results pave the way to study the role of increasing input self-sufficiency in the transition of dairy farming systems towards sustainability. Further research is required to study a wide range of systems and agro-ecological contexts, as well as to consider the evolution of farm sustainability in the long term.

show abstract

Section: Discussion and Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Lebacq

Baret

Stilmant

2015

Animal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…On the other hand, semi-natural lands are also able to contribute to the food and biomass supply, while they simultaneously maintain the capacity to deliver a wider array of essential non-provisioning services (Foley et al, 2005). Hence, there is a need to evaluate land use scenarios with respect to the provisioning services, as well as the non-provisioning services that they deliver (Bernués et al, 2011;Swinton et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Lerouge

Sannen²,

Gulinck

et al. 2016

Environmental Science & Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Land is a scarce resource and should be used in such a way that the increasing global demand for food and feed can be fulfilled, while ensuring sufficient levels of ecosystem services. While the demand on open space to deliver a multitude of services is increasing, drivers like global change and urbanization are undermining these services. Decision makers, from individual farmers to spatial planners, are in need of appropriate diagnostic tools to estimate trade-offs and synergies associated with land allocation and land use intensity decisions. This often implies trade-offs between food and biomass production and other non-provisioning ecosystem services. This paper presents an assessment on the farm scale using an integrated approach that combines spatial and economic analyses. It relies on the ecosystem services concept to evaluate land use alternatives. The analysis highlights current challenges to reach a societal optimal land allocation. INTRODUCTIONPopulation pressure results in an increasing demand for food and bio-energy products and hence also in an increasing demand for agricultural land (Meyfroidt et al., 2013;Tscharntke et al., 2012). This demand is in competition with the additional demand for land for residential, conservation, forestry, recreational, and other purposes (Zasada, 2011). With land as an increasingly scarce resource, spatial planners seek to balance land use allocation among competing stakeholders. This has led to a polarization in land use policies between demands for expanding urbanized fabric and the remaining open space used for agriculture, whilst natural areas are largely pushed back to relatively small and fragmented relics. Spatial planning has mainly focused on allocation of land to space demanding sectors and minimizing spatial conflicts. This approach falls short in considering present-day demands for multifunctionality, sustainability, ecosystem services, resilience and adaptive governance. While an integrative and spatially explicit approach to land allocation is highly needed, it is largely missing (Bomans et al., 2010b;Termorshuizen and Opdam, 2009). Particularly in strongly urbanized regions, the relation between the availability and use of space, and the potential services this space is able to provide to society, needs to be explored further. Increasing service delivery per unit of space can allow a decreasing spatial requirement for delivering this service, and hence, freeing space for other services. Fragmented peri-urban landscapes in particular, where interfaces between different forms of land use and associated actors are plenty, are in need of innovative concepts for land use allocation. Meanwhile, concepts of multifunctionality and ecosystem services already bridge the distinction between classical sectors like agriculture, nature and forestry. In the light of food and biomass production, the principal challenge is to simultaneously assess and maximize production as well as the other ES provided by bioproductive land (Balmford et al., 2012) which inevi...

show abstract

“…On the other hand, there is a need to perform dynamic studies that imply the incorporation of time in analytical frameworks of the CCP system's economic and socioenvironmental sustainability. We need to know the main determinants of the CCP system evolution and how the resilience and adaptability of beef cattle systems can be enhanced to cope with the uncertainty and variability of the physical and economical environment (Bernués et al, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic and socio-environmental performance assessment of beef cattle production systems: a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach with weight restrictions

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

-This study evaluated the performance of 21 beef cattle modal production systems that conduct only the raising phase. These production systems were developed in 21 municipalities in seven Brazilian states. We used two different DEA BCC models, corresponding to different points of view. Firstly we used an economic model that measured the ability of a production system to generate revenue with the preservation of native forest, using labor, capital, and current spending as inputs. The socio-environmental approach, corresponding to the second BCC model, uses the production factor labor as an output. In that model our interest was to assess whether the capital costs generate economic, environmental, and social benefits. Weight restrictions were imposed on the output variables of each model to explain the proposed viewpoints and to avoid inconsistent results. The results pointed out sources of inefficiency in terms of labor with low qualification, and use of bulls of questionable quality, factors that are common in extensive systems. These are some of the major bottlenecks in animal production systems as a whole.

show abstract

Sustainability of pasture-based livestock farming systems in the European Mediterranean context: Synergies and trade-offs

Cited by 311 publications

References 58 publications

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

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

Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Economic and socio-environmental performance assessment of beef cattle production systems: a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach with weight restrictions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About