# Tracking farmers’ innovations to benefit from health service of grassland diversity

Juliette Rose, Timothée Petit, Isis Binam, Sébastien Couvreur

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Juliette Rose, Timothée Petit, Isis Binam, Sébastien Couvreur. Tracking farmers’ innovations to benefit from health service of grassland diversity. Farming System Design for Sustainable Agrifood Systems: theories and practices, Aug 2025, Paris, France. hal-05467601

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# Tracking farmers' innovations to benefit from health service of grassland diversity

ROSE Juliette<fnref n="1" />, PETIT Timothee<fnref n="1" />, BINAM Isis<fnref n="1" />, COUVREUR Sebastien<fnref n="1" />

**Keywords:** Farmers' innovations tracking, 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, their expectations of health services from grassland diversity and the mobilization of this service in their practices (Rose et al., 2025). This is an interesting step forward compared to the work of Petit et al. (2022) who did not highlight any farmers mentioning grassland management for animal health. As a part of a farmers' innovations tracking, this work can be considered as "unearthed" innovations (step 2) (Salembier et al., 2021). The next step of this methodology focuses on "getting to know" the practices behind these conceptions. Thus, we investigated this research question: How does animal physiological status influence grassland allocation by farmers?

## Methods

To understand the trade-offs that these farmers made regarding the services expected from grasslands, we monitored their grassland management throughout the grazing season (March to June). Eight farmers were selected from the population studied in Rose et al. (2025) work, for saying they have a grassland management that allow them to benefit from health services. They were asked to complete a grazing schedule. Two meetings were planned. The first one aimed to explain farmers how to complete the grazing schedule by planning the grazing season. The second appointment aimed to review the grazing schedule and understand the reasons of each grassland allocation of animal batches.

The justifications were classified into 7 categories, based on what farmers said : "grass resource" corresponds to optimizing grass stock use, "grassland preservation" refers to preserving flora and production potential, "work organization" refers to facilitating farmers' work, "animal performance" corresponds to using protein and energy riche grass for milking or fattening, "animal behavior" refers to enabling certain animal behavior, "animal welfare" refers to facilitating animals' comfort and "animal health" corresponds to choosing grassland to treat a disease, preserve or strengthen animal health.

Since farmers have different numbers of animal batches, grassland plots and frequency of plots changes, they have a different number of allocations. Besides, farmers gave 1 or 2 justifications for an allocation. Thus, the number of justifications in each category was reported

<footnote n="1">¹ USC 1481 ESA-INRAE Systèmes d'Elevage, 55 rue Rabelais, 49007 Angers, France</footnote>
as a percentage of to the total number of justifications given by farmers. A mean by category has been calculated.

## Results

The most cited justification was the "grass resource" as farmers follow grass growth and rotational grazing. Second is "grassland preservation" which was particularly mentioned since it was a wet year. "Animal health" reason is one of the least mentioned justification with "animal behavior" and "animal welfare" (Table 1). Only 5 farmers gave it. For example:

E1 explains that suckler cows graze on temporary diversified grasslands for its "well-being", because flora allows growth and calves health.

E8 puts his dry cows on natural grasslands, poor in alfalfa, to prepare them for calving and to avoid metabolic disorders.

E17 explains that, after weaning the lambs, ewes graze on diversified natural grasslands, rich in aromatic plants which allow them to fill up on vitamins.

<table><caption>**Table 1.** Percentage of justification given by farmers for each category and category means</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>E1</th><th>E8</th><th>E9</th><th>E13</th><th>E17</th><th>E26</th><th>E28</th><th>E30</th><th>Mean</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Grass resource</td><td>60%</td><td>72%</td><td>70%</td><td>58%</td><td>46%</td><td>50%</td><td>85%</td><td>44%</td><td>61%</td></tr><tr><td>Grassland preservation</td><td>16%</td><td>18%</td><td>24%</td><td>0%</td><td>0%</td><td>33%</td><td>10%</td><td>23%</td><td>16%</td></tr><tr><td>Work organization</td><td>16%</td><td>7%</td><td>6%</td><td>19%</td><td>21%</td><td>7%</td><td>0%</td><td>17%</td><td>11%</td></tr><tr><td>Animal performance</td><td>0%</td><td>0%</td><td>0%</td><td>16%</td><td>25%</td><td>0%</td><td>4%</td><td>2%</td><td>6%</td></tr><tr><td>Animal behavior</td><td>0%</td><td>1%</td><td>0%</td><td>5%</td><td>0%</td><td>0%</td><td>0%</td><td>10%</td><td>2%</td></tr><tr><td>Animal welfare</td><td>4%</td><td>1%</td><td>0%</td><td>1%</td><td>0%</td><td>7%</td><td>0%</td><td>0%</td><td>2%</td></tr><tr><td>Animal health</td><td>4%</td><td>1%</td><td>0%</td><td>0%</td><td>8%</td><td>3%</td><td>0%</td><td>4%</td><td>3%</td></tr></tbody></table>

## Discussion and perspectives

Despite farmers say they use grassland diversity for animal health, this poorly reflects in their daily grazing management. We hypothesize that farmers have a more systemic approach of health services of grassland diversity. Farmers seem to group similar grassland (flora composition, environment, expected services) and allocate animal batches to a type of grassland according to animals' physiological status. Once the batch is on its corresponding grassland type, farmers manage grazing according to grass growth. We propose analyzing how farmers plan their grazing season (first meeting) for each animal batch to identify the main management rules (Coléno, 2002).

Besides, to complete the track, health justifications must be analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of these practices (Salembier et al., 2021). Agronomic content has been produced: farmers testified about their practices on camera for short videos.

## References

Coléno, F., 2002. Une représentation des systèmes de production agricoles par ateliers. Cahiers Agricultures 11, 221--225.

Lamothe, L., Savietto, D., 2017. Gestion intégrée de la santé animale. Dictionnaire d'Agroécologie. https://doi.org/10.17180/kseb-vh70
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Ed.), 2005. Ecosystems and human well-being: synthesis, The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment series. Island Press, Washington, DC.

Petit, T., Sigwalt, A., Martel, G., Couvreur, S., 2022. The Place of Grasslands in Cattle Farmers' Perceptions of Forage Production: Useful Insights of 10 Years of Empirical Research on Grasslands. Sustainability 14, 12309. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912309

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. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.7b00425

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

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. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-021-00713-z

Wezel, A., Herren, B.G., Kerr, R.B., Barrios, E., Gonçalves, A.L.R., Sinclair, F., 2020. Agroecological principles and elements and their implications for transitioning to sustainable food systems. A review. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 40, 40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-020-00646-z