Designing an operational framework for the environmental assessment of territorialised livestock farming systems

The position is shared between two research units, and the successful candidate may choose their preferred base location. Travel to the other site will be required during the appointment. Montpellier: You will be based within the ITAP research unit (a joint INRAE–Institute Agro research unit), at the Institute Agro Montpellier located on the Gaillarde campus (10 minutes by bike from the city centre and railway station). Rennes: You will be based within the SAS research unit (a joint INRAE–Institute Agro Rennes-Angers research unit), at the Institute Agro Rennes-Angers located on the Rennes campus (15 minutes by bike from the city centre and railway station). Remote working is possible for up to three days per week. You will work closely with Aurélie Wilfart (UMR SAS) and Eléonore Loiseau (UMR ITAP), both experts in environmental assessment, particularly in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), as applied to territories and agricultural production systems; Your work will be carried out within the CEDRE project, funded by the Priority Research Programme and Equipment for Sustainable Livestock Farming (2026–2031). The CEDRE project aims to design, model, and assess crop–livestock systems that address the challenges of absolute environmental sustainability, while respecting local and global carrying capacities. The underlying hypothesis is that strengthening the complementarity between animal and crops at the territorial level could reduce the pressure exerted by livestock farming activities on resources, as well as their environmental impacts, through optimized circularity and the recycling of resources and nutrients. The “design–modelling–assessment” approach developed within the project will be applied to seven case studies in France. These case studies represent a diversity of animal species, farming systems, and soil and climatic conditions. You will be responsible for developing a generic and operational environmental assessment framework adapted to territorialised livestock farming systems. More specifically, your main objectives will be to: -Select, together with the project partners, the environmental indicators to be quantified, based on recognised environmental assessment methods (e.g., Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Planetary Boundaries, and Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessment (AESA)). -Propose a methodology for quantifying these indicators in connection with the modelling approaches implemented in the project and with existing databases such as Agribalyse. -Translate this methodology into an operational assessment tool that can be adapted to different livestock farming systems and contexts. -Test the tool on two contrasting case studies. -Publish the results of this work in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.