Services provided by farming systems using livestock biodiversity: our proposed framework

Our transversal approach enabled us to develop a framework to analyze the provision of ecosystem services in farming systems using livestock biodiversity, focusing on the main elements to be taken into account and their interactions. We developed this framework in the form of a list of items to be considered in studies of ecosystem services produced by farming systems using livestock biodiversity. The main themes of the framework are summed up in Figure 3.

We formulated all the items as questions possibly applicable to other situations. The data from our empirical studies did not necessarily enable us to answer all the questions with the same level of detail, but the questions were considered key to understanding the processes for at least one case, even if empirical data to answer them were not available for all the cases.

Considering ecosystem services as a social construct implies the analysis of each ecosystem service identified, including its temporal dynamics, with these questions:

• How is the service formulated or qualified? The formulation or qualification may be plural, depending on from whose point of view the service is considered. It needs to consider dynamics over time and space.

• What processes underlie service provision?

  • Who is concerned?

    • Who are the beneficiaries and/or the people who help provide the service?

    • Who identifies the service as such?

    • Is the service produced intentionally or not (and by whom)?

    • What are the interactions between the people concerned?

  • What is the role of the breed in the process?

    • Is the effect of the breed linked with biological characteristics and the abilities of the animals of the breed (direct or indirect effects)? If so, which abilities are considered to be involved in the provision of services by the different people concerned (several points of view are possible)?

    • Is the effect of the breed linked with other attributes of the breed that are not directly linked to biological characteristics (e.g. local heritage or image)? If so, which attributes are considered to be at play by the different people involved in service provision (several points of view are possible)?

    • Can the breed be considered a marker of the search for innovation/alternatives in farming systems?

    • Does the breed play a catalytic role in relation to collective action to provide a service?

  • What are the interactions with other services?

    • Do other services result from this service? I.e. does the fact that this service is produced enable the provision of other services? (e.g. cascades or bundles of services)

    • Are there any variations in the generic formulation of the service?

    • Do other services – synergies or trade-offs – interact with it?

• To what extent is the service taken into account in the management of the breed?

In the following sections, for the different items in the framework, we present each item and provide details on:

(i) How the transverse analysis of our case studies enabled the identification of the item

(ii) How creating linkages between our cases and the literature helped build the framework and provided insights into the usefulness of the notion of ecosystem services.

We explore which elements from the literature helped us in the analysis of the case studies. The elements presented in those paragraphs result from linkages between empirical data (from case studies) and theoretical contributions (from the literature and the questions raised by our cross-cutting analysis).

Dynamics of production of a diverse range of services

The first step was to identify each service. We first established that systems that use livestock biodiversity are involved in the production of a wide range of ecosystem services. Table 2 summarizes this diversity by giving examples from our case studies. Our aim here was to illustrate the diversity and put it in perspective with a classification frame proposed in ecosystem services literature, but not to make an exhaustive, generic or ‘objective’ inventory.

Indeed, the temporal (and spatial) dynamics of ecosystem services provision are important in the cases we studied.

For example, the use of Créole cattle in Guadeloupe in oxen drawing (bœufs tirants) contests, has played a role in conserving the breed, thanks to the success of this cultural event. However, the increasing success has led to a modification in the rules to include categories of larger animals, shorten the distance to be covered, and no longer place the yoke directly on the horns. These changes have increased the inclusion of exotic breeds with greater muscle development (Limousin, Charolais, Blonde d’Aquitaine) than that of the local breed. The cultural service is thus developing, but the link between the service and the local breed is dwindling.

A second example of temporal and spatial dynamics of ecosystem services is the Montbéliarde cattle breed in the Comté cheese territory (a protected designation of origin (PDO) cheese). The milk is collected and processed by small-scale processors (called fruitières in French) distributed throughout the territory. This organization and the related livestock farming systems are associated with the production of a specific landscape, which can be considered a service. However, we identified changes in farm structure with an increase in the size of the herds. This trend is due to the increasing demand for Comté cheese (and a readiness to make the most of the attractive price of the milk for Comté), the pleasure involved in raising high-yielding dairy cows, as well as the desire to reorganize labour. The tendency to graze the herd on land close to the farm homestead rather than on more distant pastures (more typical of the Jura landscape), as well as to increase the size and homogeneity of the plant covers used in pastures, has also led to changes in the landscape (Gaillard et al., 2018).

We compared data gathered from the case studies with data in the literature, which provided benchmarks for the identification of ecosystem services. The well-known categories suggested by the (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005) or the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) (Haines-Young & Potschin, 2018) make it possible to distinguish provisioning, regulation and maintenance, cultural, and support services. Identification of services can be facilitated by using such a classification. We used the provisioning, support and regulation and cultural categories to describe the services in our cases, which helped ensure we covered a wide range of services. However, as we will see hereafter, the services we identified were not always easy to classify into a single category. Moreover, the view of ecosystem services as social constructs (Barnaud et al., 2018) underlines the fact that they are not intrinsic properties of ecosystems, and that the classification of specific services provided at a given time by an ecosystem may not still be relevant when a dynamic approach is used.

How can services be qualified and classified?

After the first step of identification of services, the first item of the framework is: How can the services be formulated or qualified?

Our analysis of case studies raised the question of how to qualify (and classify) the services. By using the word qualify we mean describe and attribute one or several qualities to a service by naming it/them. The main products of systems using the breeds concerned are food products. However, systems that produce traditional food products, can be considered to provide both a provisioning service and a cultural service. Indeed, the food products concerned often have a cultural dimension, which can be recognized, for instance, through a PDO. Similarly, a pasture system that has shaped a typical landscape can be considered both as a regulation and a cultural service, like the Causses and the Cévennes, where the pastoral landscapes are UNESCO designated world heritage sites. Many services produced by farming systems using local breeds have a cultural dimension.

Ovaska and Soini (2016) noted the overlapping of ecosystem services categories and for instance, (Díaz et al., 2018), underlined the importance of recognizing “the central and pervasive role that culture plays” in the production of nature’s contributions to humans, as well as the importance of applying a context-specific perspective. Increasing research in this field has enabled the development of multiple approaches that might be complementary (Peterson et al., 2018) to qualify and classify ecosystem services. Following Barnaud et al. (2018), we consider ecosystem services as “subjective perceptions, socially situated and constructed”. The points of view of the people involved in the situation studied should be taken into account when qualifying and classifying ecosystem services.

People concerned by the production of services

The first question regarding the second item of the framework, is: Who is concerned?

Our analysis of the case studies confirmed the diversity of actors involved in the systems using the breeds concerned and in the processes linked to the provision of ecosystem services. For instance, the range of livestock keepers involved in the use of the Bretonne Pie Noir cattle breed includes both hobby breeders and professional breeders, and both dairy and meat herds (Couix et al., 2016). Other stakeholders include researchers, consumers, environmental management associations and restaurant owners. Interactions among actors influence the provision of ecosystem services by systems using the breed.

In several ecosystem services that we identified, the same actors, particularly farmers, can be both beneficiaries and providers. For instance, some farmers who raise Bretonne Pie Noir cattle use areas of ecological interest, like wetlands, as feed resources for their cattle. The farmers thus participate in the production of the management service of those areas through grazing, and at the same time, profit from the vegetation in the areas to feed their herds.

The ecosystem functions are translated into services when they are used, consumed or enjoyed by humans (Fisher, Turner, & Morling, 2009). This makes ecosystem services beneficiary-dependent (different individuals or collectives benefit from different services (Díaz et al., 2018)). In the framework they proposed for the analysis of social interdependencies underlying ecosystem services dynamics,Barnaud et al. (2018) identified two other categories of actors together with beneficiaries: providers, and possibly intermediaries between beneficiaries and providers. To grasp the complexity of the actors involved, we suggest adding a step before qualifying actors as a beneficiary, provider or intermediary: identifying what we call the ‘people concerned’. The aim of this step is to ensure different levels of concern are included. The people concerned can then be qualified as beneficiaries, producers, intermediaries or, in some cases, may belong to more than one category. Identifying the people concerned is a step in the process of tracing actors who play a direct role in the processes underlying the provision of services and helps grasp the multiple perceptions, values and practices associated with such services (Dendoncker et al., 2018; Teixeira, Vermue, Cardoso, Claros, & Bianchi, 2018).

Some of the ecosystem services produced at the scale of the human-driven farming system are produced intentionally, e.g.edible and inedible goods. However, this is not necessarily the case for all ecosystem services. The provision of cultural services, for instance, may sometimes be considered involuntary, as they are inherited from a long history of co-evolution of the breeds, their environment and the human practices involved in the farming system. It is not always easy to determine whether a service is provided intentionally or not, especially when several dimensions of ecosystem services production are interconnected. However, the distinction proposed by Aznar, Guérin, and Perrier-Cornet (2007) may be useful to deal with the general question of whether or not ecosystem services are produced intentionally. Based on the economy of services, this author defines provisioned services as services provided by agriculture which lead a farmer to maintain or change support and/or contribute technical or human capacities. These provisioned services are supplied by the farmer intentionally and are co-built by the farmer and the beneficiaries/applicant. Aznar et al. (2007) distinguished them from service externalities that are supplied without the intention of the supplier and from service functions which refer to services supplied to humans by nature.

The role of the breed in service production: not only biological characteristics are at play

The second question regarding the second item in the framework, is: What is the role of the breed?

The provision of ecosystem services may be directly linked to specific abilities of the animals of the breeds involved. In Creole cattle, for instance, a signature of selection has been identified in the genomic region that can be linked to the strength and the shape of the horns, directly inherited from their use as draught animals (Naves et al., 2011). Resistance to specific sanitary problems, such as internal parasites in Creole goats, or to ticks and associated infectious diseases in Creole cattle, also help provide some ecosystem services (Naves et al., 2011). The integrated management of these diseases enabled by the use of resistant animals reduces the need for treatment, in turn reducing the quantity of chemical residues in edible products, but also in animal dung, which may be useful in agroecological or organic production systems.

However, the animals’ specific abilities are not sufficient to describe all the characteristics of the breeds that can play a role in the provision of ecosystem services. The Raiole, Caussenarde des Garrigues and Rouge du Roussillon breeds, for instance, show that breeds also play a role in gathering together a group of farmers who exchange breeding animals, technical knowledge or projects to add value to products (Nozieres-Petit & Lauvie, 2018).

The appropriate scale to identify the provision of ecosystem services is the ecosystem (or the farming system as far as farming activity is concerned); as a consequence, the breed is one of the elements in the system that can contribute to their provision (Martin-Collado et al., 2019).

Relevant concepts in the literature to better identify the role of the breed are not specifically related to the notion of ecosystem services. The most relevant concepts to identify the role of the animals’ specific abilities are two concepts from animal sciences: the concept of animal abilities and the concept of animal performances. Those concepts are used to describe specific biological characteristics of animals that are useful in livestock farming (directly linked with food production, like milk yield, or indirectly linked with food production, like the walking ability of animals, which is useful in pastoral systems).

A global term, often used for local breeds, covering their functional abilities, and not only their productive feature, is the hardiness of animals. Hardiness covers a wide range of abilities which depend on the situation and the point of view, as described by Hubert (2011). Being hardy means being not very demanding and therefore enabling the herd to survive even in harsh conditions (Poussard, Ribere, Bonnelle, Couix, & Labatut, 2016). The hardiness of a breed is difficult to measure and even to define precisely, as it covers a set of different animal functions interacting with the environment. Moreover, these functions are more difficult to evaluate than productive traits (e.g. milk yield, protein content, daily gain, etc.). But such abilities are highly valued in non-intensive farming systems and can be directly linked with the provision of ecosystem services (Marshall et al., 2016; Naves et al., 2011). They generally result from long-term breeding and from natural selection of the animals in specific environments, and are now being increasingly elucidated thanks to recent genomics technologies (Amills, Capote, & Tosser-Klopp, 2017). For example, a complex trait such as the adaptation to climatic stress or the ability to walk is very useful in pastoral management, and some specific physical attributes useful in such conditions are present in local breeds (for example, short hair, dark hooves or a hump in cattle) (Flori et al., 2012; Naves et al., 2011).

However, these concepts from animal sciences are not sufficient to describe other dimensions that are not biological but that may also be involved in the provision of ecosystem services, for instance, the ability to trigger collective action. As a consequence, we propose to use the term ‘breed attributes’ to cover characteristics of breeds that are both biotechnical (abilities and performances) and sociotechnical. In this definition, both the ‘ability to exploit native vegetation in pastoral systems’ and the ‘ability to trigger a collective action’ could be considered as complementary breed attributes and combined in underlying processes to produce a set of ecosystem services.

Relations between services

The third question regarding the second item of the framework is: ‘What are the interactions with other services?’

Our case studies also underline the fact that diverse ecosystem services are interrelated. For instance, in the case of Raïole, Caussenarde des Garrigues and Rouge du Roussillon breeds, we identified interactions among ecosystem services: some services result from others, like the contribution to wildfire prevention that results from the animals’ capacity to graze local resources. Some services are divisions of others: ‘participate in education’ is a subset of the service ‘the social role of livestock farming’. Several ecosystem services are produced jointly in similar farming systems (Nozieres-Petit & Lauvie, 2018). For instance, farms using the Corsican sheep breed produce milk, processed into cheeses and whey cheese (on farm or in industrial dairy plants); and they also help maintain the pastured vegetal resource, thus indirectly helping shape the landscape and preventing wildfires. Creole cattle raised for meat production and manure provision are tethered in natural savannahs, sustaining small-scale family farms, while shaping the typical hilly landscapes of Guadeloupe (mornes). Direct provisional services can be reinvested through the loop of cultural service since they enhance gastronomy, with dishes like goat curry in Guadeloupe, or can provide raw material for the production of musical instruments. The use of goats in Hindu sacrificial rites in Guadeloupe or in Reunion Island illustrates a case of service (with a cultural and religious dimension) that over time has enhanced the development of the entire goat meat sector (service provision).

‘Bundles of services’ is a useful notion in the literature to jointly consider a diverse range of services produced in similar farming systems, and it can help tackle synergies and trade-offs between services (Cord et al., 2017; Dumont et al., 2019).

Links between services and management of the breeds

The last item in the framework is: What are the links with the management of the breed?

We found examples in the case studies in which the intentional production of a new service engendered changes in the collective management of the breed. For instance, for the Raïole breed, the farmers developed collective marketing of the wool, and during the sale of rams organized by the breeders’ association, they provided information to farmers about the wool quality of rams sold, so that they could consider it in their choice of a breeding animal (Lauvie et al., 2017).

Biodiversity and ecosystem services are often closely linked. For instance, Mace, Norris, and Fitter (2012) underlined how biodiversity generally plays a key role in ecosystem services provision, as a regulator of underpinning ecosystem processes, as a final ecosystem service, and as a good subject for valuation. This link between services and management of the breed feeds the question of the links between services and biodiversity dynamics. Indeed, collective management of the breed is an important lever of livestock biodiversity dynamics: through the collective choice of selection criteria that influence the direction of breed management, but also through collective promotion actions that can have an impact on the number of animals, for instance.