Evaluation of the sustainability of contrasted pig farming systems: the procedure, the evaluated systems and the evaluation tools

Abstract

Although a few studies consider the sustainability of animal farming systems along the three classical main pillars (economy, environment and society), most studies on pig farming systems address only one of these pillars. The present paper is the introduction to a series of companion papers presenting the results of a study undertaken within the EU-supported project Q-PorkChains, aiming at building a comprehensive tool for the evaluation of pig farming systems, which is robust to accommodate the large variability of systems existing in Europe. The tool is mostly based on questions to farmers and comprises a total of 37 dimensions distributed along eight themes: Animal Welfare, Animal Health, Breeding Programmes, Environmental Sustainability, Meat Safety, Market Conformity, Economy and Working Conditions. The paper describes the procedure that was used for building the tool, using it on 15 contrasted pig farming systems and analysing the results. The evaluated systems are briefly described and a short overview of the dimensions is provided. Detailed descriptions of the theme-wise tools and results, as well as the results of an integrated evaluation, are available in the companion papers.

Evaluation of the sustainability of contrasted pig farming systems: economy

“…Data collection Three contrasted systems in each of five major European pig producing countries were selected for analysis: one conventional system and two alternative ones, as described in the introductory paper (Bonneau et al, 2014a). A sample of 10 farms/system was initially planned but sometimes less farmers were interviewed as not enough farms were…”

“…In this paper, we will consider that a sustainable farm is 'a farm operation that is viable, livable, transferable and reproducible' (Landais, 1998). As mentioned in the introductory paper (Bonneau et al, 2014a), eight active themes were chosen to assess sustainability, through its three traditional pillars (Figure 2). The 'Economic' pillar is represented by five different themes, ranging from meat quality and safety to genetic resources and animal health.…”

“…This economic sustainability analysis, as for the other themes, was carried out a farming system level (Bonneau et al, 2014a) through several kinds of indicators (Gibbon,1994;Spedding, 1994). The approach of developing an economic sustainability tool at farm level should be holistic (Gibon et al, 1999): the farm must be considered as a whole and the assessment should not focus on the pig unit only.…”

“…An analysis of the relationship between variables will allow identifying similar systems but more importantly highlight the possibility offered by the tool to underline the most important variables that contribute to the variability between systems. The other aspects of this study, common to all the tools, are addressed in the introductory paper (Bonneau et al, 2014a).…”

Review: Towards the agroecological management of ruminants, pigs and poultry through the development of sustainable breeding programmes. II. Breeding strategies

“…Label Rouge only accounts for 3.1% of French domestic production), breeding organizations do not invest in specific breeding programmes for non-conventional farming systems, for both technical reasons (population size) and in terms of economic balance. A wide-ranging study was recently conducted in several European countries on the sustainability of pig production systems, and covered traditional, organic and conventional farms (Bonneau et al, 2014a and2014b). Admittedly, breeding programmes are not really guided by the agroecological principles as presented by Dumont et al (2014), even if some current efforts based on economic considerations may help to ensure the sustainability of the pig industry: the limitations on inputs are quantitative and do not specifically incorporate the use of local and variable resources that might be less well suited to the genetic potential of the animals; the preservation of biodiversity is restricted to the management of inbreeding in selected populations, particularly in the case of local breeds; waste reduction is seen as a simple, positive consequence of improved feed efficiency, and the diversification/coexistence of production modes is not envisaged at a large scale.…”