Crop-Livestock Farming Systems Assessment in Europe

Strength of these options is the complementarity between them: both options enhance the soil fertility and allow farmers to reduce crop inputs. This is why agronomy and autonomy increased compared to reference situation.

Furthermore, options fit the local challenges and civil society attempts towards agriculture (social embeddedness is improved compared to reference situation).

Strengths of options are numerous:

• value added and stability of production;

• maximum autonomy at territorial level reduces dependency on external inputs;

• agronomic consistency by adapting practices to soil potentials and increase of diversity;

• less impact on the environment;

• workload important but more diverse and distributed along the year;

• better relations with civil society: urban/rural and consumer/producer relationships.

Weaknesses are related to (i) the decrease of crop production so the territory cannot supply another one, (ii) the decrease of meat and milk production, and more local markets, that impacts supply chain activities, and (iii) the increase of management complexity in diversified systems.

For the mountain farmers, main advantages of such a system based on contractual rearing of heifers are:

• less market risks, as prices for calves and heifers are set by the contract and they have a guaranteed demand for the heifers;

• optimal use of the feed resources (grazed grass, hay, grass silage) from the mountain farm, which is not very suitable for intensive production systems.

For the lowland farmers, main advantages of such a system based on contractual rearing of heifers are:

• they can use the land and time formerly used for the raising of heifers for other activities that are more viable from an economic point of view (e.g. crop production, increased milk production);

• good genetics from their herds are kept (in comparison to a system where animals are bought from the cattle market);

• animals raised in the mountains are said to be more robust and therefore have less health problems and an increased longevity.

The main disadvantage is that such long-distance partnership between farmers are very challenging.