Intership offer Master 2 - Solving the mystery of decreasing efficiencies from the animal to farm level in French suckler beef farms

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INRAE presentation

The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.

Work environment, missions and activities

You will work in the Herbivores joint research unit (UMR Herbivores). This unit conducts research for a multi-performing herbivore breeding, mobilizing the levers of agroecology. This involves research to better understand animal functions and the impacts of breeding practices on the animal and the environment. The UMR Herbivores has 120 permanent staff, including 74 researchers and engineers, and welcomes about 60 non-permanent staff each year (including about 20 PhD students and post-doctoral positions). It is organized into 5 research teams, a support team and a management team.

You will be hosted in the team PERAQ (Farming practices, Robustness, Adaptation and products Quality). You will interact with researchers in the team DINAMIC (UMR Herbivores) and the Animal Production Systems Group, Wageningen Universityt and Research (WUR), the Netherlands.

Improving production efficiency through better genetics, nutrition and management at the animal scale is often suggested as a solution to address sustainability challenges in livestock farming. In France, however, despite significant progress in animal breeding and an increase in concentrate use over the past decades, the beef production sector showed neither an improvement in input use efficiency nor a reduction in environmental footprints. Insights why increased production efficiencies at the animal scale do not transfer to higher scales, such as the farm scale, remain mysterious.

This MSc-internship topic is part of a joint WUR-INRAE project, which aims to understand the impacts of scale changes on production efficiency and environmental performances in French beef suckler systems.

Farms with Charolais cattle in the Massif Central, different in feed production, farm size and herd management practices in the context of the year 2019 (INOSYS-Réseaux d’Élevage, 2020), are being simulated using mechanistic models (van der Linden et al., 2018) and compared in terms of production efficiency and environmental impacts at three different scales (animal, herd and farm). Moreover, a retrospective simulation is conducted to compare these results with the performance of agricultural conditions from 20 years ago, in order to better understand the decline in efficiency at higher scales over the decades.

You will be particularly in charge of :

• Collecting key data on the input and output flows of beef cattle systems in the Massif Central, relying on the results of simulation scenarios to establish a complete life cycle inventory.
• Evaluating environmental impacts from cradle to farm gate, including greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient surplus, and feed-food competition.
• Comparing and analyzing the differences in environmental impacts between beef suckler farms under the studied eco-climatic contexts.

References : 

INOSYS-Réseaux d’Elevage, 2020. Conjoncture économique des systèmes bovins charolais - Campagne 2019. Réseaux d’Elevage, Paris, France.

van der Linden, A., Oosting, S.J., van de Ven, G.W.J., Veysset, P., de Boer, I.J.M., van Ittersum, M.K., 2018. Yield gap analysis of feed-crop livestock systems: The case of grass-based beef production in France. Agricultural Systems 159, 21–31. doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2017.09.006

Training and skills

Recommended training: Master student in one of these programs: animal production, agricultural sciences or environmental sciences

Desired knowledge: livestock production systems, environment and beef cattle farming in France

Appreciated experience: experiences in life cycle assessment, data analysis, bibliography

Skills sought: teamwork, autonomy, R software, good English skills

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):

• 2,5 days of annual leave per month of attendance;
• parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
• skills development systems: training, career advise;
• social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
• holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
• sports and cultural activities;
• collective catering.

The site is served by two shuttle buses for INRAE staff, which link the site to the Clermont-Ferrand agglomeration in the morning and evening, and by a transport-on-demand service. It also has parking facilities and services for cyclists.

How to apply

I send my CV and my motivation letter