PROBOV is exploring the possibilities for the future of Walloon cattle farms with a view to creating contrasting scenarios by 2040. Volatility of prices, changes in eating habits, and rapid changes in societal expectations are all factors that affect our cattle farms. By looking to the future, forecasts suggest that we should adopt a proactive attitude and anticipate changes.
The environment on cattle farms in Wallonia is particularly complex, as its contributing factors are strongly interconnected. The findings of one retrospective study highlighted 15 particularly structuring factors. The validation of these factors has been submitted to around one hundred stakeholders through a questionnaire, providing an assessment of their relevance, their level of importance and uncertainty.
An initial exchange workshop was organised in November 2021, bringing together experts and people involved in the sector, to identify two key factors whose evolution is highly uncertain. This uncertainty has led to the visualisation of two possible, contrasting evolutions for each factor (a prospective method known as the “compass of the future”). These two factors, and their two contrasting evolutions, will form a basis for the establishment of scenarios which incorporate other factors identified as determining factors.
A second workshop is soon to be arranged to prepare the website information architecture. These scenarios will help provide food for thought and clarify the choices of the people involved in the cattle sector, such as farmers and processors, and political decision-makers.
