Grassland-based beef-cattle farms are dynamic systems that are difficult to manage, particularly because
of their sensitivity to uncontrollable environmental factors such as weather. The design of farms and
management strategies capable of coping with a wide range of conditions is thus a challenging issue. The
SEDIVER discrete-event simulation framework presented in this article has been developed to support
the construction of dynamic simulation models of grassland-based beef-cattle farms for evaluation and
empirical design purposes. The originality of the models built with SEDIVER lies in the explicit representation
of: (i) management strategies as the planning and coordination of activities in time and space
through which the farmer controls the biophysical processes occurring within the system and (ii) the
diversity in plant, animals, grassland and farmland, and the management opportunities and difficulties
that this might induce. An application example illustrates the kind of simulation-based investigations
enabled by SEDIVER. A grassland-based beef-cattle farm in France is examined for two contrasted
management strategies: the first one corresponding to the actual practice and the second one paying
increased attention to and exploiting plant and grassland diversity. The simulation results showed that
the second one could roughly double fodder yields and thus ensure farm self-sufficiency for fodder.
Thanks to the capacity of a SEDIVER-based model to take practical production considerations into
account, it is possible to increase the realism of farm simulations and the credibility and relevance of the
farming systems which can thus be designed.