Botreau R, Farruggia A, Martin B, Pomiès D, Dumont B
1INRA,UMR1213 Herbivores,F-63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle,France.
Animal. 2014 Aug;8(8):1349-60. doi: 10.1017/S1751731114000925. Epub 2014 Apr 29.
Ruminant production systems have been facing the sustainability challenge, namely, how to maintain or even increase production while reducing their environmental footprint, and improving social acceptability. One currently discussed option is to encourage farmers to follow agroecological principles, that is, to take advantage of ecological processes to reduce inputs and farm wastes, while preserving natural resources, and using this diversity to increase system resilience. However, these principles need to be made more practical. Here, we present the procedure undertaken for the collaborative construction of an agroecological diagnostic grid for dairy systems with a focus on the mountain farming relying on the use of semi-natural grasslands. This diagnosis will necessarily rely on a multicriteria evaluation as agroecology is based on a series of complementary principles. It requires defining a set of criteria, based on practices to be recommended, that should be complied with to ensure agroecological production. We present how such agroecological criteria were identified and organized to form the architecture of an evaluation model. As a basis for this work, we used five agroecological principles already proposed for animal production systems. A group of five experts of mountain production systems and of their multicriteria evaluation was selected, with a second round of consultation with five additional experts. They first split up each principle into three to four generic sub-principles. For each principle, they listed three to eight categories of state variables on which the fulfilment of the principle should have a positive impact (e.g. main health disorders for the integrated health management principle). State variables are specific for a given production, for example, dairy farms. Crossing principles with state variables enabled experts to build five matrices, with 75 cells relevant for dairy systems. In each cell, criteria are specific to the local context, for example, mountain dairy systems in this study. Finally, we discuss the opportunities offered by our methodology, and the steps remaining for the construction of the evaluation model.
反刍动物生产系统一直面临着可持续发展的挑战，即如何在减少环境足迹并提高社会接受度的同时维持甚至提高产量。目前讨论的一个选项是鼓励农民遵循农业生态原则，也就是说，利用生态过程减少投入和农场废弃物，同时保护自然资源，并利用这种多样性提高系统恢复力。然而，这些原则需要更加实用。在此，我们介绍了为合作构建奶牛系统农业生态诊断网格所采取的步骤，重点是依赖半天然草地的山地养殖。由于农业生态学基于一系列互补原则，这种诊断必然依赖多标准评估。这需要根据推荐的做法定义一组标准，必须遵守这些标准以确保农业生态生产。我们展示了如何识别和组织这些农业生态标准以形成评估模型的架构。作为这项工作的基础，我们使用了已经为动物生产系统提出的五项农业生态原则。挑选了一组五位山地生产系统及其多标准评估方面的专家，并与另外五位专家进行了第二轮咨询。他们首先将每项原则细分为三到四个通用子原则。对于每项原则，他们列出了三到八类状态变量，原则的实现应对这些变量产生积极影响（例如，综合健康管理原则的主要健康问题）。状态变量针对特定生产而言是特定的，例如奶牛场。将原则与状态变量交叉使专家们能够构建五个矩阵，其中75个单元格与奶牛系统相关。在每个单元格中，标准针对当地情况，例如本研究中的山地奶牛系统。最后，我们讨论了我们的方法所提供的机会以及构建评估模型仍需采取的步骤。
