Evaluation of the Contribution of Pastures on the Economic Sustainability of Small Ruminant Farms in a Typical Greek Area

Abstract

Small ruminant production is predominantly linked to the use of natural pastures; however the intensification process in past decades has led to a gradual abandonment of grazing and the prevalence of intensive patterns. This paper contributes to the discussion about the economic performance of small ruminant farms relative to the use of pastures. Using data from a sample of Greek sheep and goat farms it is shown that grazing does not necessarily increase economic performance. If not organized carefully, farms which graze more do not reduce their feeding costs or they counterbalance this reduction with increases labor expenses. An efficiency analysis of the sample using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) shows that farms which graze less are generally more efficient than the ones which graze more. Furthermore, the input-oriented DEA model reveals that the same level of output could be achieved with less a reduction of hours grazing by 12.5% and 11.9%, respectively for farms which graze less than 1800 h and more than 1800 respectively. It is concluded that a higher level of organization is required to render grazing a practice with positive economic impact on farms, including infrastructure for better accessibility of pastures, more efficient rations and training. This applies also to the framework for pasture use in Greece, as the delivery of Integrated Grazing Management Plans is expected to provide guidance and stability to small ruminant farmers.

Economic and Financial Sustainability Dependency on Subsidies: The Case of Goat Farms in Greece

“…It is true that major expenses in goat farms occur from feeding expenses [20][21][22]. Moreover, last year, grazing was supplemented more with purchased forage and feed [23]. In Greece, goat farming is associated with investments in equipment and livestock, which increase production costs [24].…”

Efficiency Analysis as a Tool for Revealing Best Practices and Innovations: The Case of the Sheep Meat Sector in Europe

“…An interesting finding is that the extensive efficient farms seem to depend more on home-grown feed, whereas the intensive and semi-intensive farms depend more on purchased feed. Sheep farmers even under the same production system apply different feeding strategies; some produce home-grown feed, whereas others prefer to purchase a large part of their feed from markets and a debate regarding which strategy is the most profitable differ [29,40]. Another interesting result is that the fixed cost, which is the most important source of production cost followed by feeding cost, was much higher in the inefficient farms.…”

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study that uses efficiency analysis to increase knowledge on best practices that could be potentially introduced to sheep farms as innovations. Regarding the European small ruminant sector, the studies on efficiency are limited in the estimation of the level of technical efficiency of the farms and the detection of the sociodemographic and environmental factors that explain efficiency differentials (indicatively see [2,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29]). Moreover, all of these studies are focused on the dairy sheep sector; only Perez et al [23] estimated the efficiency level on the sheep meat sector, without, however, providing insights regarding the structural and economic characteristics of the efficient farms.…”

Techno-economic and financial index analysis for the improvement of entrepreneurship and competitiveness strategies of Greek goat enterprises

“…As regards the production costs, and in particular food expenses, they are a key factor in determining the final economic result for the sector and its competitiveness. However, controlling and clearly identifying requires a high level of organization and developing strategies to boost competitiveness, such as establishing a system of quality assurance of products produced, a clear geographical identification of product origin, and the conditions for breeding and production, not only in Greece but in other Mediterranean countries (Papadopoulou et al, 2020;Daniele et al, 2021).…”