Long term analysis of meat sheep farming systems in France. Which dynamics of evolution and which factors can explain the economical performance?

Abstract

Sheep farming has been strongly challenged over the last thirty years. Sheep farmer's income remains among the lowest in Frenchagriculture in spite of important changes. The main part of this study was based on a long-term technico-economical survey and monitoring.Increasing the size of farms did not improve income. In the long term, the technical results (ewe productivity), together withthe control of feeding costs (concentrates), ensured a high level of gross margin per ewe. The latter remains, in the long term too, thefirst factor to explain the net income, rather than the flock size or the control of structural costs. We demonstrate that these elementsof technical management also participated in reducing the environmental impact in terms of energy consumption and greenhouse gasemissions per kilogram of carcass produced. The average results conceal a great heterogeneity in farm structures, functioning,performances, and in long-term dynamics of evolution. We propose an original method to characterize long term farm trajectories,based on multivariate analysis.