Multi-scale approach to the services provided by a quality-labelled dairy chain: contribution of new indicators – cAnOPee

Agrifood sector have a decisive role to play in the new challenges of agroecology. cAnOPee is an interdisciplinary project that aims to develop a new approach to assess the components of the sustainability of an agri-food system. The chosen case study is the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) dairy sector of Normandy. The objectives are (1) to analyse the services associated with this sector, from dairy farms to processed products, at different scales, through well-established indicators, and (2) to elaborate and evaluate new indicators, and include the most relevant ones in the establishment of original bundles of services. Nearly 500 dairy farms will be studied, in order to produce an original typology based on technico-economic and herd data, on the plot structure and the pedoclimatic and geomorphological context. This work will allow to refine the corpus of variables from which a typology of dairy farms of the PDO sector in Normandy will be built. Thirty representative farms will be selected and will be the subject of a service analysis. The study scales will be the farm, the landscape, the grassland, the livestock, raw milk and cheeses. A spatial analysis based on how these farms fit into the agricultural territories will be undertaken. It will aim at understanding the contribution of PDO farms to the provision of ecosystem services at different scales (watershed, catchment area for cheese dairies, small agricultural regions). Ecosystem services at grassland scale will be assessed on a representative plot: support services (biodiversity, including the microbial compartment in the phyllosphere), provisioning services (fodder quality, including the evaluation of new indices based on soluble carbohydrates and phenolic compounds, their antioxidant and immunomodulatory properties), regulation services (carbon storage, water regulation, pollination), and cultural services. The most relevant service indices will then be selected to compare grasslands through multivariate analysis and identify a set of bundles of services corresponding to grassland groups. Production services at the dairy farm level will also be assessed. The structure and diversity of the dairy microbial communities (from teats, raw milk and cheese) associated with the PDO sector will be analysed. The technological functionalities (bioprotective, acidifying, and flavouring activities) and health-related functionalities (immunomodulatory, antioxidant, heavy metal chelation activities) of these microbial communities will be studied to produce new indicators for original services. The expected results are (1) the identification of the relationships between ecosystem services and of a set of bundles of services corresponding to groups of "grasslands-management-landscape", (2) the evaluation of the role of the different modes of spatial integration of PDO dairy farms in territories on the quality of services, and (3) new indicators and indexes related to services associated to microbial communities. Interdisciplinary data obtained from the different partners will be used in an integrated approach, in order to provide a global representation of the services and solution-oriented knowledge, in order to propose balanced trajectories between milk production, profitability and preservation of the biodiversity and the environment. To do this, emblematic cases identified on both the farm typology and the bundle of services will be studied to describe their added value and will be used to communicate on the services provided by PDO farms. CanOPee's partners will contribute to the operationalization of the project by carrying out awareness-raising actions for AOP actors at regional and national levels - and for politicians and citizens.