How to concurrently achieve economic, environmental, and animal welfare performances in French suckler cattle farms

• Published in: Agricultural systems 2024-06, Vol.218, p.103956, Article 103956
• Main Authors: Mysko, Larissa, Minviel, Jean-Joseph, Veysset, Patrick, Veissier, Isabelle
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cow-calf producers; Farm economics; Input use intensity; Life Sciences; Multiperformance; Structural equation modelling; Welfare proxies
• ISSN: 0308-521X; 1873-2267
• DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2024.103956

Society has a number of expectations around livestock farming that go beyond mere production and affordable food prices to now encompass high standards of animal welfare and environmental performance. Here we investigate whether and how it is possible to concurrently achieve good economic, environmental, and animal welfare performances on suckler cattle farms. We extracted economic indicators, proxies for animal welfare and environmental performances, and data describing farming practices and conditions from a technical-economic database featuring data collected from >250 French suckler farms over the period 2016–2022. We analysed the relationships between animal welfare performance, environmental performance and economic performance using a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. We then used logit models to identify farming practices and conditions that promote ‘multiperformance’. Farms that combine practices where nutritional needs of suckler cattle are synchronised with the grass availability cycle are more likely to multiperform. The synchronisation is managed by exploiting certain key animal characteristics (depletion and restoral of body reserves), choosing the right calving season, and selling animals well adapted to grass-feeding. Combining two analytical models—one establishing the relationships between several performance dimensions and one establishing the relationships between multiperformance and farming practices—allows to bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and concrete farming measures on the topical issue of achieving multiperformance in more than two dimensions, where the literature is still scarce. [Display omitted] •Society wants livestock farms to concurrently deliver animal welfare, environmental and economic performances.•We investigate whether and how multiperformance is achievable based on technical-economic data of 250 suckler cattle farms.•We use structural equation modelling to assess the concepts of animal welfare, environmental and economic performances.•There is a positive moderately-strong link between the three performance dimensions.•Combining practices that synchronise cattle nutritional needs with the grass growth cycle is a multiperformance strategy.