Livestock systems contribute significantly to environmental issues and need to undergo an agroecological transition. This transition is not only technical, but also involves an evolution of farmers’ ways of seeing and interpreting the world, i.e., worldviews. We investigate livestock farmers’ worldviews and their relationships with farming practices (grazing and mowing management) in three Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) cheese areas in the French mountains. The study is based on quantitative and comprehensive qualitative surveys in 37 farms. We identify entities typically considered by farmers and the kind of relations they have with these entities, as well as the ontological background, sources of knowledge, and worlds of justifications. Four ideal-typical worldviews emerge: Modern; Traditional; Ecological Intensive; Holist. These four worldviews coexist in each area and also at the farm scale. Three selected farmer monographs illustrate this complexity in detail. The four worldviews are consistent with other typologies in literature. Both Ecological Intensive and Holist worldviews can be considered as “agroecological”; however, they correspond to very different conceptions of agroecology. Different worldviews imply different sustainability indicators and pathways, as well as alternative knowledge-management systems. Finally, the coexistence of multiple worldviews is a key driver of the agroecological transition, which can be enhanced by facilitating confrontation and exchanges between worldviews.

SUMMARY: To upgrade the use of permanent grasslands in livestock farming systems for their economic and environmental utility, their value needs better assessment in terms of both quantity (biomass production) and quality (nutritive value: organic matter digestibility (OMD) and crude protein content (CP)). The wide variability in permanent grassland botanical composition makes it important to understand the links between vegetation characteristics and permanent grassland value, and how far environmental factors influence this value. The current work investigated how vegetation characteristics and weather explained the variability of the biomass production and nutritive value of permanent grasslands. Two models were used to determine the best vegetation characteristics for the prediction: (i) plant functional types (PFT), proportions of grasses, legumes and forbs and weather, and (ii) two proxies for PFT (dry matter content (DMC) and phenological development at medium plant stage (MPS)), proportion of grasses, legumes and forbs, and weather. The study was conducted on a set of 190 permanent grasslands distributed over a wide range of soil, climatic and management conditions, and lasted 2 years (2009/10). For each of the permanent grasslands, climatic data, values of vegetation characteristics, biomass production and nutritive value were collected at the beginning and end of spring, and during summer and autumn regrowths. Contribution of weather was important and particularly for regrowths. Composition in terms of botanical families, plant stage and sward DMC was the common variables that explained both biomass production and nutritive value during the growing season. Biomass production was mainly explained by the proportion of legumes and forbs, MPS and DMC considering both models. Grass nutritive value was linked to the same factors, including PFT. However, the contribution of grass PFTs was lower in models. Both models could be used to predict biomass production and nutritive value:R²of the two models are quite similar. Over a wide range of environmental and management conditions, vegetation characteristics and climatic data explained almost half of the variance of forage quality and 20–40% of the variance of biomass production.

Managed grasslands provide environmental and agronomic services that can be predicted from the botanical and functional composition of the vegetation. These are influenced by management, edaphic and climatic factors. The present report set out to estimate and analyse the relative importance of management, soil and climate factors on botanical and functional characteristics of grassland vegetation. A set of 178 French grasslands having a large pedoclimatic and management gradient was selected, and information collected on botanical composition, pedoclimatic factors and management. Six vegetation characteristics were considered: two botanical (floristic composition and species dominance) and four functional (proportion of entomophilous species, number of oligotrophic species, leaf dry matter content and date of flowering). First, the links between the characteristics of the vegetation were analysed to check for any redundancy among them; all were kept. Second, it was demonstrated that botanical and functional characteristics were not driven by the same factors: functional composition was characterized by management, edaphic and climatic factors, whereas botanical composition was influenced mainly by climatic and edaphic factors plus other factors. Interactions between factors also have to be taken into consideration to predict botanical and functional composition of grasslands. Functional and botanical characteristics of vegetation help to predict ecosystem services delivered by grasslands and may be used in combination.

Farmers’ health compared to the general population has been the object of some studies and reviews. Among all factors implied in psychological and physical health, the farming system (i.e., organic or conventional farming) was identified as one of the relevant factors to investigate. This article aims to review the literature established on the comparison between organic and conventional farmers’ health and its correlates. Twenty-nine quantitative or qualitative articles were identified for inclusion (n = 29). Results showed that organic farmers had globally better psychological and physical health than conventional farmers. Effect sizes were small to large; they differed according to the target outcome. In addition, factors correlated with farmers’ health were usually psychological, social, financial, and agricultural. This review of literature encourages further research in this area, particularly on developing agricultural models.