Review: An integrated graphical tool for analysing impacts and services provided by livestock farming

Abstract

Livestock farming is criticized for negatively impacting the environment, concerns about animal welfare and the impact of excessive meat consumption on human health. However, livestock farming provides other underappreciated and poorly communicated benefits to society in terms of employment, product quality, cultural landscapes and carbon storage by grasslands. Few attempts have been made so far to simultaneously consider the services and impacts provided by livestock production. Here, we propose an integrated graphical tool, called the ‘barn’ to explicitly summarize the synergies and trade-offs between services and impacts provided by livestock farming. It illustrates livestock farming interacting with its physical, economic and social environment along five interfaces: (i) Markets, (ii) Work and employment, (iii) Inputs, (iv) Environment and climate, (v) Social and cultural factors. This graphical tool was then applied by comparing two contrasting livestock production areas (high livestock density v. grassland-based), and the dominant v. a niche system within a crop-livestock area. We showed the barn could be used for cross-comparisons of services and impacts across livestock production areas, and for multi-level analysis of services and impacts of livestock farming within a given area. The barn graphically summarizes the ecological and socio-economic aspects of livestock farming by explicitly representing multiple services and impacts of different systems in a simple yet informative way. Information for the five interfaces relies on available quantitative assessments from the literature or data sets, and on expert-knowledge for more qualitative factors, such as social and cultural ones. The ‘barn’ can also inform local stakeholders or policy-makers about potential opportunities and threats to the future of livestock farming in specific production areas. It has already been used as a pedagogical tool for teaching the diversity of services and impacts of livestock systems across Europe and is currently developed as a serious game for encouraging knowledge exchange and sharing different viewpoints between stakeholders.

Optimising economic and environmental performances of sheep-meat farms does not fully fit with the meat industry demands

“…It would be worthwhile to extend this analysis to a wider range of regulating and cultural services provided by sheep grassland-based farming systems. The bundle of services framework proposed by Ryschawy et al (2019) allows accounting for a wider range of sustainability drivers (labour and employment, social and cultural factors, biodiversity) beyond the economic and environmental performance indicators that were calculated in this article. It thus provides a wider basis for comparing sheep-meat production systems.…”

The Myth of Cultured Meat: A Review

“…Livestock produce not only meat, milk, and eggs, but also wool, fiber, and leather. They also provide socio-cultural services including tourist events such as transhumance, and products with a local image and sense of terroir such as Protected Designation of Origin cheeses and other products (4,31).…”

Quelle science pour les élevages de demain ? Une réflexion prospective conduite à l’INRA

“…Ils concernent aussi la gestion de la coexistence et de l'hybridation entre systèmes dominants et systèmes alternatifs pour répondre à différentes demandes des consommateurs, l'innovation dans les collectifs de travail et la répartition de la valeur ajoutée pour une attractivité accrue des métiers et le maintien de l'emploi rural. Enfin les effets environnementaux, sociétaux et économiques de l'élevage étant fortement imbriqués, le développement de scénarios prospectifs permettant une vision globale des performances (notion de bouquets de services/dis-services) de l'élevage afin de pourvoir les articuler, de pointer des synergies et des antagonismes et au final de gérer les compromis en rendant visibles les arbitrages sont nécessaires (Ryschawy et al, 2017 ;Ryschawy et al, 2019) et doivent aussi contribuer à programmer les recherches.…”