Multifunctionality of livestock grazing systems, a lever to envision its possible futures

Abstract

On April 19th 2024, the Action Network “Restoring value to grassland” of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock organized in Montpellier, France, following a four days internal workshop, a oneday hybrid conference entitled "Multifunctionality of livestock grazing systems, a lever to envision its possible futures", hosted in Montpellier by Agropolis International, and supported by the French Ministry of Agriculture, CIRAD and INRAE and Agropolis Fondation. Watch the full video recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyhr91stBCs The conference gathered a large community interested in the future of livestock grazing systems, with more than 160 participants from diverse parts of the world and representative from public and private sectors, academia, NGOs, civil society and international organizations. A diversity of presentations from the network and external invitees, and interesting debates including livestock actors at farm scale and institutional actors that followed, highlighted how the multifunctionality concept and approach can help overcoming the threats of financialization, monodisciplinary and mono-indicator assessment of the livestock sector for sustainable development. The need for more evidence-based information and tools to facilitate the implementation was mentioned. These conclusions will help driving the work of the Action Network and GASL globally for more interactions with committed multiple stakeholders, further development of diverse evidence-based documents, guidelines and tools and to design its future action plan 2025-2027, as well as contributing to the dynamics preparing the IYRP for 2026