The workshops ends with a plenary session, in which participants are asked whether there is a shared vision about the future farming system. If such a shared vision is present, the discussion on the strategies to select is tailored towards this vision. If not, all possible alternatives and strategies are kept in mind. These strategies for future systems are compared with the strategies that have been implemented in the past and current system, as derived from FoPIA-SURE-Farm 1, to understand what should change. The case study is the extensive sheep farming system located in the Huesca province, Northeast Spain. Huesca covers about 15,000 km2 and two main regions can be distinguished: 1) The Pyrenees and prePyrenees in the North, covering about 6,000 km2 , where agricultural activities are confined to extensive livestock; and 2) the southern part of the province, characterised by the plains of the Ebro depression , where extensive farming , intensive farming and crop farming are present. In Huesca, the number of decreased from 2,902 to 1,018 and the number of sheep from 923,399 to 521,501 . The size of farms has shown an upward trend in the last years. The current size of a herd is between 200 and 1,000 sheep . These trends are a result of the convergence of a range of economic, institutional, social and environmental challenges the farming system is facing. The extensive sheep farming system is highly dependent on EU and national subsidies, and hence, vulnerable to changing agricultural policy goals and increasing bureaucracy and control requirements. Regarding the social challenges, hydroponic channel the case study area suffered a vast population decline over the last century that comes along with a lack of skilled labour, social services and infrastructures.
The low attractiveness of the farming system and the agricultural specialization result in the lack of new entrants. Finally, the extensive sheep farming system is increasingly limited in the access to pastures. The strategies that farmers have been implementing over time to deal with these challenges follow four management patterns, i.e. intensification, extensification, diversification and conservation . In addition to the provision of private goods, such as to ensure sufficient farm incomes and deliver high-quality food at affordable prices the extensive farming system also provides public goods. Grazing helps to maintain and preserve the natural resources contributing to keep soil quality and biodiversity by maintaining landscape heterogeneity . Extensive livestock activity is also important to prevent forest fires by keeping the area clean from dry biomass , which act as fuel in Mediterranean areas . Grazing activities also provide recreational areas demanded by society and keep the rural areas attractive. As a result of the challenges mentioned in the previous paragraph, levels of functions in the farming system are generally perceived to be low . The clear presence of interacting economic, social and environmental domains makes the extensive sheep farming system in Huesca, an interesting case study for studying sustainability and resilience. In addition, there are signs of low sustainability, low resilience and consequently a pending decline of the farming system . The FoPIASURE-Farm 2 workshop was conducted on 14 February 2020 from 9.00 am till 3.00 pm with one break in the middle and lunch at the end. Eighteen people participated in the workshop, of which seven were farmers . The rest of participants belonged to the agri-food value chain , cooperatives and distributors, and public sector , and local public administration.When discussing critical thresholds , participants argued that these were already reached and that the farming system was on the edge of collapse/decline .
When participants resisted to participate individually, the flexibility of the methodology allowed for slightly adapting the procedure in Step 21 . In order to stimulate the discussion and obtain values for thresholds, the trend and current value of the indicators according to the official statistics were presented to participants. In case of disagreement, participants were asked to define the current value of the indicators in a plenary session, which helped the researchers to determine how the discussed values were more or less close to the threshold. Based on the plenary discussions on thresholds, researchers deduced a number of enabling conditions that are needed to maintain the current system in the future. In the next sections, actual levels, developments and threshold levels of function indicators, indicators of resilience attributes and challenges are presented. articipants indicated that the gross margin is the decisive variable that determines whether the farming system is on the edge of collapse or not. Participants indicated that the gross margin threshold of the farms is 25–30 €/head. According to the literature, gross margins in the farming system vary among farms depending on feeding costs, size of herds and aids . This implies that not every farm is similarly close to the gross margin threshold. While the gross margin of the farms in the flat areas is at threshold and beyond , the distance of gross margins to the thershold appears larger in the farms located in the mid-mountain areas. The latter have lower feeding costs than the former because the herd feeding relies almost enterely on the availability of pastures. Herd size in mountain areas used to be higher allowing farmers to benefit from economies of scales.Participants agreed that the current number of sheep has reached the tipping point in the area.
There are currently about 521 thousand sheep heads in the province of Huesca, with a reduction of 43.7% since 2005 . The decrease in the number of sheep in the farming system has not been as sharp as that of the number of farms. The reason that the decrease of sheep number has not been so marked in the last 10 years is because herds of quitting farms have been acquired by the farms that stayed. The strategy of buying sheep from quitting farmers allowed other farmers to increase their margins and remain in the farming system. Pardos et al. found an average increment of 85 sheep per farm from the period 1996–2001 to period 2002–2005. Currently, farmers are investing a great effort and time managing between 500 and 1,000 sheep/shepherd, but the gross margins are not enough to hire new shepherds and increase the herd. Consequently, from now on the number of sheep is expected to decrease with each farm disappearing from the system. All participants agreed that the costs of feeding are strongly related to the availability of pastures. During the workshop, availability of pastures was assessed by looking at the total available surface of pastures . In the province of Huesca the total amount of pastures has decreased by 65% in the period 2003–2018, with a current total of 160,000 ha in the province of Huesca . Participants concluded that the availability of pastures meets the farming system’s needs, especially now the number of sheep has decreased. However, in some areas such as the flat areas and those surrounding the Natural Parks and other protected areas , the access to pastures is limited or nil. Although grazing contributes to modulate the vegetation dynamics , bureaucracy and regulations limit the access to the pastures in the protected areas. Simultaneously, the increasing intensification of the agriculture in the flat areas is limiting the area of grazing lands. Moreover, the intensification of the farming system has led to the abandonment of lands, mainly in the mid-mountain areas. This abandonment causes a simplification and homogenization of the landscape due to the increase of the tree and shrub stratums, which lead to decrease in biodiversity and increase of fires . Participants found it difficult to provide a minimum value of pasture surface they need for grazing, but they pointed out that the authorities must ease the access to pastures as well as compensate for environmental services delivered by the ovine farming system.
Based on the input from participants, the research team estimated that the system is somewhat close to a critical threshold regarding the availability of pastures. According to participants, the lamb consumption should not decrease more than the current level, indicating that the current level in fact is the critical threshold. Lamb meat consumption has declined strongly in the period 2006–2019 , with a current value of 1.3 kg/inhabitant/year . Participants mentioned that in the short term this challenge has a negative influence on the gross margin and the number of sheep, whereas, in the long term, it can lead to the closure of farms. Participants identified several drivers that explain the lowering demand: consumers preferring other type of meats, mainly pork and chicken; disappearing culinary traditions; upcoming vegetarian and veganism trends; and the increasing campaigns against livestock farming influencing the negative perception of the sheep farming system . Overall, decreasing demand is indeed related to urban trends and social-economic conditions such as consumer preferences and family structures . The quality of products from the case study area may give a competitive advantage .Participants in the workshop are extremely worried about the increasing number of wolves and bears. The wild fauna attacks are recent and there are no clear statistics, but there is great concern about the potential impact. Participants did not provide the value of a critical threshold for wild fauna attacks in the ovine farming system. They indicated that the wild fauna attacks are more frequent in the mid-mountain than in the flat areas,hydroponic dutch buckets where the attacks rarely occur. Participants mentioned that the attacks not only negatively affect the profitability of the farm, but also the farmers’ quality of life as attacks imply more time and investments to take care of the herd. Based on the input from participants, the research team estimated that the system is not close to a critical threshold regarding wild fauna attacks. To compensate for the plenary input in Step 2, the research team decided that each participant should individually assess the impact when critical thresholds are exceeded . In a plenary session all participants discussed the effects of exceeding critical thresholds of challenges and interactions between critical thresholds. Overall, exceeding the critical threshold of one of the challenges was expected to lead to moderate to strong decline in performance of main functions and resilience attributes .
Plenary discussion results are presented in detail in Appendix C. In the evaluation step, interactions of thresholds across domains and scales resulted in a vicious circle which explains the expected decline in system functioning when critical thresholds are approached and exceeded . To adequately describe interacting thresholds in Fig. 2, some additional indicators were added that came forward during the discussions with stakeholders. Fig. 2 can be read as a summary of the information provided in the previous sections on thresholds of main function indicators, challenges and resilience attributes. Gross margin, a main function indicator of the system, plays a pivotal role in the interaction of thresholds and affects the number of farms and consequently the number of sheep in the area. Gross margins are directly affected by three main challenges: reducing subsidies, decreasing consumption and increasing feeding costs. Reducing gross margins and the closure of farms further reduces the available workforce, which reinforces the closure of remaining farms directly and indirectly via increasing feeding costs, which is why a lack of labor is seen as a main challenge. The challenge of increasing feeding costs is indirectly affected by increasing occurrence of droughts and wild fauna attacks, two other identified challenges. These challenges reduce the access and use of pastures, a proxy for the resilience attribute “production being coupled with local and natural capital”. Reduced access and use of pastures is eventually leading to shrub encroachment. Shrub encroachment is further stimulated when the number of sheep becomes insufficient to graze all available pastures. From a social perspective, the closure of farms and the decreasing workforce is expected to lead to a decreasing rural population.Instead of providing defined alternative systems on post-its, participants proposed ideas in a plenary session, thus using the flexibility that the methodology is offering. Two main alternative systems, their goals, functions and resilience attributesand enabling conditions came up in the brainstorming.