Designing a multicriteria index at farm-scale to assess dairy farm abandonment risk in mountain area

Overview & Synopsis

Grass-based dairy farming systems located in mountains provide multiple services to these territories by preserving landscapes, biodiversity... However, the number of dairy farms decreases since the 1980’s. This abandonment is mainly due to a lack of intergenerational transmission (IT) explained by farm features (structure constraints, economic assets) and on-farm working conditions (FWC) which are considered as major critical issues of sustainability. So, assessing those aspects can lead to detect possible leeway to improve sustainability of dairy farms and to maintain milk production in mountains. Yet, among the many existing sustainability indexes at farm-scale, few integrate social and economic aspects including FWC and IT. Those indexes do not allow getting a precise overview of working conditions and transmission possibilities by being too restrictive or too subjective. So the aim of this study is to design a multicriteria index focused on those aspects. To design a relevant and meaningful tool to the target users – the farmers – a bottom-up approach has been chosen. First, a focus-group, including farmers, advisors and researchers, de¿ned criteria covering the different aspects of FWC, IT. Then, they selected or created appropriate indicators out of a list of possible existing indicators. Afterwards, the index has been built by weighting indicators and criteria. This process results in an index made up with: (1) 5 criteria for working condition described by 40 indicators including original criteria such as mental dimension of work; (2) 6 criteria for farm transmission described by 21 indicators covering structure and production features, economic assets and transmission perspectives. The index will be further tested on dairy farms.