Economic impacts of the lack of sustainability of grasslands in goat systems: what can we observe among farmers in the West of France?

摘要

In goat farms of the west, the forage systems are mostly based on temporary grasslands, which often do not evolve as expected by the farmers, especially in terms of yield, swards and disappearance of legumes. In this context, the work of the Inosys networks and the PEREL program show that trying to increase the sustainability of goat pastures is not necessarily the most obvious choice: indeed, surface charges occupy a marginal place in goat systems, and keeping one's pasture one or two years longer represents low gains for high risks for the farmers This limited sustainability in goat farming can be explained by many factors, such as the search for high feed value forage rather than more perennial grassland. In the case of farms based on the use of alfalfa, a sometimes too intensive management can explain this low sustainability. In grazing systems, keeping grasslands for a shorter period of time can help control parasitism, and in multi-species systems, there is still room for improvement in the management and choice of species integrated into grassland mixtures.