Combining beef cattle and sheep in an organic system. II. Benefits for economic and environmental performance

•Combining several animal species is consistent with the principles of agroecology.•Only the sheep enterprise benefited from the combination with beef cattle.•Combining beef cattle and sheep improved the performance of the farming system.•Economic and environmental performance and also feed-food com...

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Published in:Animal (Cambridge, England) England), 2023-04, Vol.17 (4), p.100759-100759, Article 100759
Main Authors: Benoit, Marc, Vazeille, Karine, Jury, Clément, Troquier, Christophe, Veysset, Patrick, Prache, Sophie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal Feed - analysis
Animal Husbandry - methods
Animals
Cattle
Farms
Feed–food competition
Grass-fed meat
Greenhouse Gases
Life Sciences
Livestock farming system
Meat
Mixed system
Multiperformance
Sheep
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Summary:•Combining several animal species is consistent with the principles of agroecology.•Only the sheep enterprise benefited from the combination with beef cattle.•Combining beef cattle and sheep improved the performance of the farming system.•Economic and environmental performance and also feed-food competition were improved.•The benefits of the mixed system outweighed the additional costs of fencing. Combining several animal species to optimise the performance of the whole farming system is one of the core tenets of agroecology. Here, we associated sheep with beef cattle (40–60% livestock units (LU)) in a mixed system (MIXsys) and compared its performances to those of a specialised beef cattle-only system (CATsys) and a specialised sheep-only system (SHsys). All three systems were designed to have identical annual stocking rates and similar farm areas, pastures and animals. The experiment was conducted for four campaigns (2017–2020) in an upland setting exclusively on permanent grassland under certified-organic farming standards. The young animals were fattened almost exclusively with forages: at pasture for lambs and indoors with haylage in winter for young cattle. Abnormally dry weather conditions led to hay purchases. We compared between-system and between-enterprise performances based on technical, economic (gross product, expenses, margins, income), environmental (greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), energy consumption) and feed–food competition balance indicators. The mixed-species association only benefited the sheep enterprise, with +17.1% meat production per LU (P 
ISSN:1751-7311
1751-732X
DOI:10.1016/j.animal.2023.100759