Overview of R&D Collaborative Projects on Mixed Farming Systems

Over the past fifteen years, French R&D collaborations have addressed mixed crop-livestock systems through more than 70 projects. These projects were analyzed by reviewing proposal and final report summaries, alongside a brief questionnaire sent to project coordinators. Themes were grouped into clusters including livestock feed optimization, grassland integration, organic fertilization of crops, environmental impact modeling, sustainability assessment, and diagnostic of farming practices. The study highlights predominantly biotechnical approaches at the farm or unit scale, the development of a feed formulation tool, and identifies future research needs in soil dynamics, long-term viability of mixed farming, and organizational models for ecological intensification at the territorial scale.