The slow adoption of innovations is a key challenge that the European sheep sector faces for its sustainability. The future of the sector lies on the adoption of best practices, modern technologies and innovations that can improve its resilience and mitigate its dependence on public support. In this study, the concept of technical efficiency was used to reveal the most efficient sheep meat farms and to identify the best practices and farm innovations that could potentially be adopted by other farms of similar production systems. Data Envelopment Analysis was applied to farm accounting data from 458 sheep meat farms of intensive, semi-intensive and extensive systems from France, Spain and the UK, and the structural and economic characteristics of the most efficient farms were analyzed. These best farmers were indicated through a survey, which was conducted within the Innovation for Sustainable Sheep and Goat Production in the Europe (iSAGE) Horizon 2020 project, the management and production practices and innovations that improve their economic performance and make them better than their peers.
Keywords: best practices; economic performance; efficiency; innovations; sheep farms.