Sustainability’s Indicators of sheep farming systems in the eastern steppe ecosystem of Algeria

Abstract

Sheep farming systems in the steppe of M'sila eastern Algeria play a key role in the red meat production chain. The aim of this contribution is to assess the sustainability of sheep farms in relation to the current functioning of the breeding and to describe the strong and weak points limiting improvement of productivity in a perspective of sustainability. The method of indicators of sustainability of farms (IDEA) was used to evaluate sustainability. The typological results allowed us to distinguish two main types of livestock farming, namely agro pastoral and pastoral, which have different sustainability profiles. The agro pastoral type is characterized by sustainability scores of 69.4/100, 43.6/100 and 36.4/100 respectively for agro ecological, socio-territorial and economic sustainability. The pastoral type shows the same trend with superiority in the economic scale. The comparison of the sustainability scales in relation to the type of livestock showed that the two livestock systems are significantly different for agro-ecological and socio-territorial scale (P<0.05) in contrast to the economic scale. Consequently, each type requires particular improvements, according to its functioning and the threshold of the scores realized at the level of the global sustainability in order to guarantee a profitability of the breeding at the level of the Algerian steppe region.