Collective choice of breeding goals in a participatory process of selective breeding: features identified during workshops with two local selection groups in southern France

To design relevant breeding programmes in an agroecological perspective, a key issue is to understand what farmers expect from their livestock. However, when breeding programmes are collective projects, they gather a diversity of breeders, and a diversity of associated farming systems. This questions how the collective definition of breeding goals can integrate the diversity of features valued by breeders. We analyzed exchanges that took place during workshops held with two local selection groups of beekeepers to define breeding objectives. They inventoried numerous and diverse breeding goals. Both groups reached agreement through the process of ranking these objectives. Several elements discussed during the workshops were not included in our original framework; we call them gaps. One gap, for instance, concerned the question of whether beekeepers aimed for homogeneity or diversity at the scale of an apiary. The agreements reached led to quite a large number of breeding objectives, which gave rise to questions about how to include all of them in an actual selection process. We envisioned that the highlighted gaps could be studied in future research on livestock breeding and farming systems, as for instance one of them echoes the question of the relevant scale to assess performances in livestock farming systems.