# Co-design enables farmers to conceive ways of managing grassland diversity for animal health despite a lack of technical references

Juliette Rose, Timothée Petit, Sébastien Couvreur

## ► To cite this version:

Juliette Rose, Timothée Petit, Sébastien Couvreur. Co-design enables farmers to conceive ways of managing grassland diversity for animal health despite a lack of technical references. Farming System Design for Sustainable Agrifood Systems: theories and practices, Aug 2025, Paris, France. hal-05467611

HAL Id: hal-05467611

https://hal.science/hal-05467611v1

Submitted on 20 Jan 2026

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 - Attribution - International License
# Co-design enables farmers to conceive ways of managing grassland diversity for animal health despite a lack of technical references

ROSE Juliette<fnref n="1" />, PETIT Timothée<fnref n="1" />, COUVREUR Sébastien<fnref n="1" />

**Keywords:** Co-design, Grassland diversity, Animal Health

## Introduction

Livestock production is now controversial mainly for its ecological consequences. One way to achieve an agroecological transition in this sector is adopting integrated animal health management (Wezel et al., 2020). Feeding is one of the levers to integrate health management (Lamothe and Savietto, 2017). In ruminant production, grass, represents an important part of the diet. Interest of grasslands for agroecological transition has been proven (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). However, the effects of some grassland species' secondary metabolites, which have antioxidant or anthelmintic properties (Poutaraud et al., 2017), on animal health remain unclear.

A study led in 2023 on 30 French livestock farmers identified four farmer profiles based on their knowledge of plant properties, and their expectations of health services from grassland diversity for examples (Rose et al., 2025a). Some farmers said they have practices that allow them to benefit from these services. We adopted an on-farm innovation tracking to qualify these practices (Salembier et al., 2021). However, few practices involving grassland diversity for animal health management were qualified (Rose et al., 2025b).

In this work, we assumed that fixation effects stopped the transition from representation to practice. The co-design method, especially the KCP method, is known to produce innovative solutions by unfixing participants and stimulating creativity (Berthet et al., 2016). This method enables farmers to find their own solutions instead of receiving advice about the "best solution" (Dumont et al., 2020). Additionally, it includes knowledge input which appears relevant in our controversial context and the lack of evidence regarding health effects of grassland diversity. KCP method takes place in 3 phases: i. knowledge input (K), ii. Idea formulation (C), iii. Project construction (P) (Berthet et al., 2016). We hypothesized that this method will enable farmers to co-design innovative practices and identify what is fixing them.

## Methods

A committee (2 farmers, 2 farmers' groups facilitators, 2 botanists, 1 veterinarian, 3 animal scientist) has defined the objectives of the workshops, decided on the necessary knowledge inputs and associated speakers, and constructed a control CK-Tree.

The workshop took place over 2 days: 1,5 days for knowledge inputs (K) and 0,5 day for the C and P phases. Farmers belonging to groups working on animal health or grasslands were invited. Participants had presentations on plants health properties and farmers' testimonies (videos, farm tour) about managing grassland diversity for animal health. The idea exploration phase (C) was tightened to a specific question from a farmer: "how to take better account of grassland diversity to improve the fertility of suckling cows". For the project phase (P), the farmer selected the most interesting ideas and explain why.

<footnote n="1">¹ USC 1481 ESA-INRAE Systèmes d'Elevage, 55 rue Rabelais, 49007 Angers, France</footnote>
## Results

Five farmers participated on the first day and ten participated on the second, eight of whom took part in the C and P phases. Four farmers were present both days.

In total, 28 ideas were formulated, 16 ideas concerned grasslands, in which only 6 ideas were linked to grassland diversity. The remaining ideas were related to water quality, herd management, genetics, and mineral and vitamin supplementation.

Presentations from K phase were poorly mobilized in farmers' discussion, appearing only three times. Otherwise, a lack of knowledge was identified, for example: is there a grassland plant with fertilizing properties?

## Discussion and perspectives

Co-design enables farmers to pass from the representation of health potential of grasslands to conceiving practices to benefit from it. Even though, the subject and the local context of the farm led farmers to focus first on feeding supplementation, the workshop allowed farmers to overcome this fixation effect (Agogue and Cassotti, 2013).

Nevertheless, few ideas were related to grassland diversity. An explanation is that the lack of knowledge and proof of the effect of grassland diversity on animal health prevents the formulation of concrete practices. As Ravier et al. (2018) point out, producing knowledge seems necessary to go further. We suggest continuing the work with farmers and other stakeholders to determine what evidence and knowledge is needed.

## References

* Agogue, M., Cassotti, M., 2013. Understanding fixation effects in creativity: A design-theory approach. DS 75-2: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED13), Design for Harmonies, Vol.2: Design Theory and Research Methodology, Seoul, Korea, 19-22.08.2013 103–112.

* Berthet, E.T.A., Barnaud, C., Girard, N., Labatut, J., Martin, G., 2016. How to foster agroecological innovations? A comparison of participatory design methods. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 59, 280–301.

* Dumont, B., Modernel, P., Benoit, M., Ruggia, A., Soca, P., Dernat, S., Tournadre, H., Dogliotti, S., Rossing, W.A.H., 2020. Mobilizing Ecological Processes for Herbivore Production: Farmers and Researchers Learning Together. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 4.

* Lamothe, L., Savietto, D., 2017. Gestion intégrée de la santé animale. Dictionnaire d'Agroécologie.

* Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Ed.), 2005. Ecosystems and human well-being: synthesis, The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment series. Island Press, Washington, DC.

* Poutaraud, A., Michelot-Antalik, A., Plantureux, S., 2017. Grasslands: A Source of Secondary Metabolites for Livestock Health. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 65, 6535–6553.

* Ravier, C., Jeuffroy, M.-H., Gate, P., Cohan, J.-P., Meynard, J.-M., 2018. Combining user involvement with innovative design to develop a radical new method for managing N fertilization. Nutr Cycl Agroecosyst 110, 117–134.

* Rose, J., Petit, T., Biasotto, M., Michaud, A., Couvreur, S., 2025a. Comment les éleveurs évoquent-ils les services de santé liés à la diversité prairiale ? Presented at the Journées de Printemps.

* Rose, J., Petit, T., Binam, I., Couvreur, S., 2025b. Tracking farmers' innovations to benefit from health service of grassland diversity. Presented at the Farming System Design.
Salembier, C., Segrestin, B., Weil, B., Jeuffroy, M.-H., Cadoux, S., Cros, C., Favrelière, E., Fontaine, L., Gimaret, M., Noilhan, C., Petit, A., Petit, M.-S., Porhiel, J.-Y., Sicard, H., Reau, R., Ronceux, A., Meynard, J.-M., 2021. A theoretical framework for tracking farmers' innovations to support farming system design. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 41, 61.

Wezel, A., Herren, B.G., Kerr, R.B., Barrios, E., Gonçalves, A.L.R., 2020. Agroecological principles and elements and their implications for transitioning to sustainable food systems. A review. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 40, 40.