Author(s) : François Coléno, Inra-Sad Toulouse, Laboratoire d'agronomie, BP 27, 31326 Castanet-Tolosan Cedex, France..
Summary : Using data on industrial firm organisation a representation of agricultural production systems based on the concept of workshop is developed. This approach identifies management units in the production system, considered as independent for day-to-day management but co-ordinated at specific moments in time. There is a decision level between the farming system and the field leading to the planning and monitoring of agricultural workshops within time. When this decision level is defined, it is possible to identify planning, monitoring and coordinating rules for the workshops, distinguishing between workshop operative and workshop coordination. We use this representation for dairy cow production systems, in order to identify causes of delay in spring grazing with high potential dairy cows. We show that forage production monitoring needs (1) a planning period in September to define allocation to the different workshops (grazing, grass silage and maize silage), with a reserve area to cope with climatic hazard on grazing; and (2) a monitoring period after the first grazing cycle, when the farmer makes the final allocation of the reserve area to grazing or grass silage (Figure 1). Besides these two planning and monitoring periods the farmer has to manage changes in herd feeding. Use of spring grazing can thus be made more or less compatible with the management logic we identified: (i) use of stocked forages (silage) in order to avoid year by year area variation, feed over stocks and feeding breaks, (ii) avoiding year by year maize area variation through spring grazing, which could lead to maize overstocking and (iii) maximising grazing while minimising overstocks thereby accepting year by year area variation for maize and grass silage.
Pictures
Figure 1. Diagramme de planification/pilotage du système fourrager
mixte (pâturage, ensilage d'herbe et ensilage de maïs) en élevage
laitier.
Figure 1. Planning and monitoring diagram of a dairy cow's mixed forage
system (grazing, grass and maize silage).
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