Alternative management of livestock agroecosystems (ALTER)

In tropical and Mediterranean regions today, livestock farmers and stakeholders are facing many challenges. These include obtaining decent incomes for farmers, improving the quantity and quality of production, managing resources more carefully, reducing the negative externalities or 'disservices' associated with livestock farming (emission of GHG and polluting effluents), managing livestock farming systems that are more resistant to hazards and adapting to multiple drivers of change. These challenges are technical, economic, environmental and social and, although they may be difficult to reconcile, they correspond to what is required for the sustainable development of livestock farming.

In these regions, livestock actors are confronted with multiple issues that they seek to understand (search for intelligibility), and whose potential evolution they want to foresee (search for predictability) to enable them to choose the appropriate options to guarantee the sustainability of their activity (search for feasibility).