Regenerative rangeland management farmers in Spain: enthusiastic among a great diversity in farming conditions

ABSTRACT

Regenerative Rangeland Management (RRM) is emerging as one of the most promising approaches to achieving sustainability of animal production at economic, social and environmental levels. The current bottleneck in RRM is a slow adoption rate, as the farmers’ views are still poorly studied and considered. We conducted individual surveys with 33 Spanish RRM farmers that collected multiple variables regarding general characteristics of farms, productive parameters, rangeland management and opinions around perceptions. We performed associative tests in order to detect the most important drivers of economic profitability and personal satisfaction. Among a wide diversity of farms, we found no features or management types associated with higher profitability, but rather a link to the level of intensification and degree of experience. About 93% of the farmers were mostly satisfied with RRM, even though they face difficulties – highlighting bureaucratic ones. To overcome such hurdles, we encourage improving the dialogue between farmers, researchers and institutions. This is the first state-level study on RRM in Spain, and one of the first analyses collecting farmers’ perceptions on this topic.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Animal productivity
• livestock grazing
• adaptive management
• ionputs
• socio-ecological systems
• sustainable food systems

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge all the surveyed farmers who kindly and with high hopes answered all our calls and questions. We also want to especially thank Ana Digón and Pati Jiménez Amat, from Asociación Agricultura Regenerativa Ibérica, for their valuable disposition during the process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during the current study are not publicly available due to privacy of the economic parameters of the farms. A reduced dataset of the farms that accepted to share their data is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/21683565.2023.2195359

Additional information

Funding

Financial support was provided by María de Maeztu Excellence Unit 2023-2027 Ref. CEX2021-001201-M, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033); by the Basque Government through the BERC 2022-2024 program; by the CircAgric-GHG project funded by the 2^nd 2021 call “Programación conjunta internacional 2021” (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR (ref. num: PCI2021-122048-2A); and by the IUBS project “Global Integrative Pastoralism Program”. A.d.P. was funded by the Ramon y Cajal program from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RYC-2017-22143). A.d.P. and P.M. were funded by Ikerbasque – Basque Foundation for Science. P.M. was also funded by a post-doctoral grant of the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science. R.S.-Z. was funded by the “Candido Iturriaga y Maria Dañobeitia” foundation.