A typology of European organic multi-species livestock farms

Summary

Keeping two or more livestock species or categories on the same farm simultaneously is a diversification option that has received little attention to date. We surveyed 95 organic multi-species livestock farms across six European countries to build a farm typology and characterise their diversity in structure, management, and performances. Farms combined cattle (meat, milk), small ruminants (meat, milk) and/or monogastrics. Survey data on the structure, management, and performances allowed for the creation of indicators (including farmer’s satisfaction) used to run a principal component analysis and an agglomerative hierarchical clustering to build the farm typology. The following variables structured the first four factors of the PCA: F1: Farm size and crop-pasture balance; F2: Intensification - Feed self-sufficiency; F3: Work productivity - Diversification activities and marketing; F4: Dairy cattle and permanent pasture. Four groups of farms emerged from the clustering: G1: Large area with a high share of crops, low feed autonomy, dairy cattle with beef cattle or pigs, on-farm processing, short sale channels and agritourism; G2: Prevalence of poultry with beef cattle, leading to high labour productivity and low feed autonomy, although ruminant diets highly rely (90%) on fodder; G3: Beef cattle associated with meat sheep, high feed autonomy, frequent short sale channels; G4: Italian farms with predominantly dairy ewes and dairy or meat cattle, rangelands, on-farm processing and short sale channels. Our next objective is to study the relationships between agricultural practices, work organisation, sales management and farm performances.