Trends in the association of herbivores and pigs in the Massif Central

Visuels d'intervention de Christine Roguet, IFIP, 1er septembre 2024, à Florence, Italie (ATF-EAAP)

The Massif Central in France is a mountainous and grassland territory, primarily dedicated to grazing livestock. On 15% of the national area, it concentrates 54% of the country’s dairy sheep, 37% of the beef cattle, 33% of the meat sheep, 19% of the goats, 11% of the dairy cattle, 6% of the chickens and 5% of the pigs in 2020 according to the agricultural census. Out of 39,065 farms with a significant livestock (excluding farmyards) in 2020, 2,155 have granivores, mostly associated with herbivores. More precisely, 75% of pig farms have herbivores, beef cows in 62% of cases and milk cows in 24%. But these mixed farms have declined more sharply than the specialists over the last 10 years. This raises multiple concerns within the pig sector which has strong roots in this territory (quality signs, slaughterhouses, gastronomy, etc.). The APORTHE multi-partnership action-research program is interested in pig farms in the Massif central. A recent analysis carried out using individual data from the 2020 agricultural census, compared to 2010, showed that the decrease in the number of pig farms (-28% in 10 years) comes from a sharp decline in the pig-dairy association (-45%) and to a lesser extent in pig-beef cattle association (-25%). As a result, our drawn typology showed a large proportion of pig farms with beef cattle in 2020. Other results specify the extent of the changes in the herbivore-granivore association between 2010 and 2020. Our communication will enlight the trends and the future of these mixed animal farms which remain essential for the agricultural and local economy of several sectors of the Massif and other mountain areas.

Document en accès ouvert disponible sur le site APORTHE