Saving the breeds: Farmers’ preferences for endangered dairy breed conservation programmes

Concentration on elite breeding lines has endangered a number of traditional dairy breeds. Although several of those breeds are known for superior functional traits such as robustness, they are increasingly replaced by Holstein cows. A discrete choice experiment with 159 breeders revealed the determinants of farmers’ willingness to join a stylized scheme to conserve endangered dairy breeds. Results of a random parameter logit model showed that farmers favour short-term contracts and a bonus for a collective cattle population increase. By contrast, farmers tend to reject schemes that ban slatted floors. The majority of the respondents would be willing to join an entry-level scheme without financial support, pointing to an important role of intrinsic motivation present in farmers, which seems to be particularly pronounced for small breeds threatened by extinction. If it is the political will to offer such conservation schemes, we recommend inclusion of a collective bonus. This finding is also supported by the results of a latent class analysis. A collective bonus might change social norms regarding the conservation of endangered breeds and provide impetus for increasing the overall population of a specific breed.