Assessing the contribution of French dairy ruminant farms to the production of food for human consumptionAgronomic Innovations 88, 103-116.

French dairy systems (cow, goat and ewe) have a wide variety of feeding systems. The feed consumed may compete with human food (cereals, grain legumes, silage maize) or not (grassland, rangeland). Gross and net energy and protein efficiencies were assessed. The net approach takes better account of feed-food-fuel competition. Dairy systems are net consumers of energy and net producers of protein for humans, with the best results from grassland systems. At a national scale, net protein efficiency is 1.16 for ewes, 1.12 for goats and 1.88 for cows. Edible energy feed consersion efficiencyis 0.63, 0.54 and 1.00 respectively. There is room for technical improvement in all three sectors, although the variability is sometimes considerable. In order to disseminate these results, innovation groups made up of members of the sectors and livestock farmers have made it possible to better target the methods of communicating the main results of the ERADAL project. In addition, a range of media was created and made available to everyone throughout the ERADAL project.