Evaluating Socio-economic and Environmental Sustainability of the Sheep Farming Activity in Greece: A Whole-Farm Mathematical Programming Approach

Ruminant livestock farming is an important agricultural activity, mainly located in less favoured areas. Furthermore, ruminants have been identified as a significant source of GHG emissions. In this study, a whole-farm optimisation model is used to assess the socio-economic and environmental performance of the dairy sheep farming activity in Greece. The analysis is undertaken in two sheep farms that represent the extensive and the semi-intensive farming systems. Gross margin and labour are regarded as socio-economic indicators and GHG emissions as environmental indicators. The issue of the marginal abatement cost is also addressed. The results indicate that the semi-intensive system yields a higher gross margin/ewe (179 €) than the extensive system (117 €) and requires less labour. The extensive system causes higher emissions/kg of milk than the semi-intensive system (5.45 and 2.99 kg of CO2 equivalents, respectively). In both production systems, abatement is achieved primarily via reduction of the flock size and switch to cash crops. However, the marginal abatement cost is much higher in the case of the semi-intensive farms, due to their high productivity.