Understanding the Relationships between Extensive Livestock Systems, Land-Cover Changes, and CAP Support in Less-Favored Mediterranean Areas

Abstract

Farm abandonment and over-extensification trends in less-favored livestock breeding areas in the Mediterranean have led to socio-environmental issues that are difficult to assess and address, due to the characteristics of these areas (e.g., poor data availability and reliability). In a study case that presents many of the characteristics common to these areas, we combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to assess (i) the relationship between livestock production and land-cover change and (ii) the drivers of farmer decisions, concerning the types of livestock they breed. We show that the Common Agricultural Policy’s objective of open-landscape preservation cannot be achieved through the observed livestock management practices, with the most heavily CAP subsidy-dependent activities (e.g., suckler-cow breeding) having one of the weakest contributions to this objective. We also econometrically show that suckler-cow breeding is more likely to be adopted as a complementary or main activity in farms facing a labor scarcity and land abundance context. These results complement the literature and contribute to the discussion regarding the design of CAP support for less-favored Mediterranean areas.

The role of local pigs for economic and socio-cultural in East Flores District, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

“…This means allowing farmers to reduce the production costs of pen building and feed provision, increasing earnings, and facilitating care. However, Delattre et al (2020) and Gaona et al (2021) reported that the weakness of an extensive livestock system is the requirement for an ample supply of input to maintain good livestock productivity. An extensive care system also tends to increase the risks of caring for and spreading diseases (Temple and Manteca 2020;Delsart et al 2020).…”

Water pollution from pharmaceutical use in livestock farming: Assessing differences between livestock types and production systems

“…For selecting livestock production systems, many categorizations exist in the literature. For example, intensive (Ilea, 2009) and extensive (Delattre et al, 2020) livestock farming, precision livestock farming (Hartung et al, 2017), multispecies livestock farming (Martin et al, 2020), and integrated crop‐livestock farming (Moraine et al, 2014) are represented. These categories are not, however, based on any regulatory indicators and are mostly defined for individual studies, fitting the research purpose and setup.…”

Modeling drivers of farming system trajectories in Mediterranean peri-urban regions: Two case studies in Avignon (France) and Pisa (Italy)

“…In most cases, these dynamics are identified through land use and land cover change analysis (e.g. Bajocco et al, 2012;Delattre et al, 2020;Kefalas et al, 2019;Marraccini et al, 2015), whereas land use management and spatially-explicit information about agricultural and farming practices are seldom considered, even though they are relevant to understand the actual impact on ecosystem services, instead of the potential one (Rizzo et al, 2019;Temme and Verburg, 2011). Moreover, there are still some gaps of knowledge on how divergent development trajectories act on the same areas (Debolini et al, 2018).…”