Ruminant breeding: towards a labour shortage?

Abstract

In mainland France, in the 2020 agricultural census, significant-sized ruminant farms accounted for half of the non-salaried agricultural jobs (in full-time equivalents). Farm managers and co-managers are experiencing a marked ageing process, particularly in the dairy and beef sectors, but this is less pronounced than for farms without livestock. This development raises questions about the consequences, particularly in terms of production volume, of the inevitable wave of departures associated with it. Nevertheless, the percentage of farmers under 40 years of age seems to have stabilised since 2010, at variable levels depending on the sector, thanks to the maintenance of a significant flow of young and not so young workers with very varied profiles and production choices. These installations develop the diversity of ruminant farms, both for individual farms, which are more frequently involved in two activities and/or taken over outside the family framework and oriented towards short circuits, and for jointly run farms (GAEC), which are more frequently family-run, and which are continuing their individual growth in size and volume of production.  Despite a much faster reduction in the volume of labour on ruminant farms (–20% in ten years compared to -11% for agriculture as a whole), an analysis of the workers’ individual trajectories of the workforce shows, over the last decade, greater individual stability among ruminant workers on these farms, with more of them remaining in the sector between 2010 and 2020, whatever their status, and reveals that employees can, better than elsewhere, be candidates for installation.