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Scenarios of optimal organization of sheep and goat transhumance

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Abstract

Sheep and goat transhumance is still practiced in all parts of Greece, as it is suitable for the particular conditions of the country’s mountainous areas. The purpose of this study was to present a set of alternative plans of development of the sector under the scenarios of extensification and premium product pricing. Alternative patterns of optimal organization were elaborated by means of mathematical programming, which is an established optimization method for problems including various activities under a set of constraints. The analysis used farm management data from a survey of transhumant farms in an area typical for transhumance, which was divided to three sub-areas according to the dynamics of vegetation succession. Farms in the three sub-areas were found to differ significantly in terms of economic performance, yields and labour use. The results of the analysis demonstrated how the valorization of labour combined with the availability of hired workers led to two different trajectories in the area. In addition, it showed that premium pricing of high-quality milk can have significant impact on the structure of the system. These findings yield important considerations regarding the organization of multifunctional production systems, which play important sociocultural and environmental roles in fragile territories.

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Notes

  1. This is a seemingly unexpected finding, as the average small ruminant farm size in Greece is about 100 ewes per sheep farm and 59 dams per goat farm (ELSTAT 2009). However, these numbers do not take into account the relatively widespread ‘co-located’ farms, which are registered separately but are owned by two or more family members, while costs and revenues are managed in common. Nevertheless, according to Papanastassis (2009), the average size of transhumant flocks is actually larger than that of sedentary ones in Greece.

  2. In linear programming problems, ‘the shadow price of a constraint is the difference between the optimized value of the objective function and the value of the objective function when the right hand side (RHS) of a constraint is increased by one unit’ (Alaouze 1996). In this application, therefore, shadow prices demonstrate the additional gross margin that would result if one additional unit of labour (1 h) was used.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Hellenic Agriculture Organization “Demeter”, Terma Alkmanos str, 115 28, Athens, Greece

    Athanasios Ragkos

  2. Department of Agriculture, School of Geotechnical Sciences, International Hellenic University, Sindos, 574 00, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Stavriani Koutsou

  3. Department of Forestry and Natural Environment, Laboratory of Range Science, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 236, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Maria Karatassiou & Zoi M. Parissi

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  1. Athanasios Ragkos
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Correspondence to Athanasios Ragkos.

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Ragkos, A., Koutsou, S., Karatassiou, M. et al. Scenarios of optimal organization of sheep and goat transhumance. Reg Environ Change 20, 13 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01598-6

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