How is grazing perceived by stakeholders of the dairy goat chain in Western France? - Institut Agro Rennes-Angers Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

How is grazing perceived by stakeholders of the dairy goat chain in Western France?

Résumé

Goat milk chains of Bretagne and Pays de la Loire regions (France) are on a positive dynamic. Due to a low feed self-sufficiency rate (55%) dairy goat systems are sensitive to an increase in feed costs and volatility of agricultural commodities. Pasture is a potential way to improve feeding self-sufficiency. As 90% of goats do not pasture, the present study aims to investigate farmer’s and stakeholder’s perception of grazing in dairy goat. In October 2017, a semi-quantitative survey was performed using 19 farms, 21 chain stakeholders (food supply, advisers, cheese makers and banks), 24 consumers and 3 cheese retailers. The farming systems differed on the size of the flock (from 25 to 1000 goats), the type of farming (13 conventional and 6 organic farms), the main forage used (maize silage (2), hay (9), pasture (6)). All participants agreed with the positive effect of grazing on feed self-sufficiency in farming and being consistent with social expectations by reducing the gap between consumers who believe in farming system based on small grazing flocks and reality. All farmers agreed with the negative effects of grazing on goat health due to parasitism which appears as the main technical issue. However, farmers with a grazing system manage to deal with parasitism, are satisfied with the application of grazing. Other farmers and agricultural advisors consider grazing as technically difficult and it requires high technical skills (parasite and grass offer). Most of milk factories and some farmers think that goats are not suitable for grazing. Grass production is also highly dependent to weather conditions implying day-to-day and seasonal variations of milk production. Only organic milk factories agree on handling hose variations due to grazing systems. Nonetheless, some conventional milk factories point out an improvement of organoleptic qualities of cheese made with milk from pasture. In conclusion, surprisingly, despite the high expectations from consumers and common interest for feed self-sufficiency through grazing, most of stakeholders remain reluctant to developing grazing in goat systems due to the lack of knowledge and technical advices.

Domaines

Biologie animale
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Dates et versions

hal-01889273 , version 1 (05-10-2018)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01889273 , version 1
  • PRODINRA : 447924

Citer

Anne-Lise Jacquot, Pierre-Guy Marnet, Jocelyne Guinard-Flament, Catherine Disenhaus. How is grazing perceived by stakeholders of the dairy goat chain in Western France?. 69. Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP), Aug 2018, Dubrovnik, Croatia. ⟨hal-01889273⟩
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