Resilience Along The Organic Dairy Cattle, Sheep And Goat Farms And Sectors

Summary

The increasingly uncertain agricultural context raise the question of the resilience of organic dairy farms and sectors to hazards. We aimed to assess the resilience of French organic dairy cattle and sheep farms and sectors and to characterize the drivers of and threats to resilience. We combined interviews with 36 stakeholders of the sectors in the main European countries producing organic milk, 128 farm surveys, statistical analysis of desktop data on technical and economical performances of 204 farms and simulation modelling over 6 typical farms to develop an integrated view of the issue. The combined analysis showed that despite being very different (regarding input dependency, market orientations, etc.), the organic dairy cattle and sheep farms and sectors are presently quite resilient but could be challenged by the globalization of milk markets (especially with cow milk) and climate change.