Marketing: driving changes in livestock farming systems

In addition to the hazards and constraints associated with changes in the physical environment, the evolution of agricultural markets, especially the organization of downstream operators, implies transformations in livestock farming systems. Our goal is to demonstrate how product marketing helps shape the transformations of livestock farming systems, enhancing flexibility and resilience, toward agroecological transition. We propose the notion of a mode of marketing as a set of product–buyer pairs characterized by their volume and their annual temporal distribution. 50 livestock farmers were interviewed to describe the diversity of modes of marketing existing in the suckler sheep herd sector in a pastoral region in southern France. We monitored eight of them for three years and analyzed changes in the modes of marketing, breeding practices. We also analyzed the evolutions of associated value chains. For eight other farms, we conducted a retrospective analysis covering several decades. Our results highlighted three farmers’ strategies based on the choice of a mode of marketing at the campaign scale. We showed that this choice is a way to manage the different market risks. Furthermore, it impacted breeding practices. Over the medium term, we observed that seven of the eight farmers monitored changed their modes of marketing under market signals. These changes implied transformations in the management of the livestock farming systems. During their careers, the eight old farmers have changed their mode of marketing several times. We concluded that the choice of modes of marketing, and their changes, are a means of managing different market risks. Depending on the timing and the extent of their changes, it could be a source of operational or strategic flexibility. Modes of marketing must be considered to understand and support transformations in livestock farming systems toward the agroecological transition, as a way of resilience.