How poultry chains and territories interact towards shared sustainability ?

Poultry production chains are often thought as not linked with the territory. However, feeds come from grown crops and dejections are spread over the territory. Moreover, positive impact (e.g. employment) or negative ones (e.g. water degradation) are observed. Therefore, our aim was to study the complex interaction between the poultry production chain and hte territory on a sustainability standpoint : how sustainable the dynamics of this system will be on different time and space scale ? A mutlidisplinary team (animal scientists to sociologists and geographer) was involved since several expert points of view were needed to understand some underlying mechanisms of the poultry chain - territory system. Five territories were selected as reflecting different dynamics in contrasted context in France and Brazil. The extrema could be on one side a developping production cluster (Rio Verde in Brazil) compared to the western region of France, Bretagne, where poultry production is decreasing. Following quantitative data collection and interviews of the actors, each system was accordingly represented as the conjunction of driving forces (e.g. world demand), pressures (e.g. environmental rules), state (e.g. poultry producer's income) leading to impacts (e.g. new industrial organization). Up to half of the driving forces and pressure were similar throughout the 5 territories even though their correlated impacts could be contrasted. Furthermore a limited number of indicators were proposed to characterize the sustainability state and dynamics (e.g. nitrate water content and evolution on different time scales). They could be used to underline the invariants and specificities of each territory, and support decision-makers analysis for a relevant poultry production-territory development