Preferences for pig breeding goals among organic and conventional farmers in Sweden

Abstract

Organic and conventional pig farmers' preferences regarding breeding goal traits important in pigs were investigated using an advanced internet-based questionnaire. Farmers were asked what pig traits they spontaneously considered important, to rank 15 given traits and to weigh traits against each other given the estimated genetic change (calculated based on selection index theory). Organic and conventional farmers ranked both functional and production traits highly. For example, more than 70 % of farmers from both production systems ranked piglet survival, fertility, sow longevity, leg health, feed conversion, piglet birth weight, piglet and slaughter pig growth as being of high or moderate importance (1-10/15). Litter size and shoulder ulcers were ranked higher by respondents from conventional farms, while parasite resistance and roughage consumption were ranked higher by respondents from organic farms. Regarding estimated desired genetic change, respondents from organic farms favoured health traits while conventional farmers favoured growth traits. In order to obtain genetic improvement in those traits, farmers gave low priority to carcass quality and litter size. Due to the variations in farmers' breeding goal trait preferences demonstrated here, it is clearly important to take farmers' preferences into consideration when developing future pig breeding strategies.

Quels programmes d’amélioration génétique des animaux pour des systèmes d’élevage agro-écologiques ?

“…Une première enquête a été réalisée par l'« International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements » (IFOAM 2014) et concerne les filières animales de nombreux pays. Deux études ont été conduites sur les systèmes suédois, l'une en production laitière bovine (Ahlman et al 2014), l'autre en production porcine (Wallenbeck et al 2015). Enfin, une quatrième étude a été réalisée en 2015 sur les productions françaises de ruminants (laitiers et allaitants des espèces bovine, ovine et caprine), porcs et volailles (Phocas et al 2015).…”

“…Dans ce cas, des index synthétiques de sélection adaptés aux objectifs individuels des éleveurs doivent leur permettre d'identifier les reproducteurs répondant à leurs besoins spécifiques. Une telle stratégie peut être développée par l'entremise de questionnaires web ainsi que proposés par Ahlman et al (2014) pour les bovins laitiers ou Wallenbeck et al (2015) pour les porcs.…”

Review: Towards the agroecological management of ruminants, pigs and poultry through the development of sustainable breeding programmes: I-selection goals and criteria

“…However, the literature on breeding goals and selection criteria that can match the requirements of farmers engaged in low-input production systems is very scarce; only four studies have addressed these issues to date. Three of them dealt with organic farming, either using a general approach across livestock sectors and countries (IFOAM, 2014), or an approach focussed on particular livestock systems in Sweden, that is milk production (Ahlman et al, 2014) and pig production (Wallenbeck et al, 2015). The fourth survey was recently carried out in France on the ruminant, pig, and poultry sectors, at the request of the Ministry of Agriculture.…”

“…However the weightings in overall breeding goals may differ as a function of production systems. These weightings can either be obtained through surveys (Ahlman et al, 2014;Wallenbeck et al, 2015) or derived from bio-economic models that consider different production systems (Leenhouwers et al, 2011).…”

Methods for calculating economic weights of traits in pigs

“…Economic weights of many production and functional traits were calculated for pigs in the last years and various approaches were used when defining the economic importance of the traits for the selection purposes. Generally, this approaches ranged from subjective decisions of the breeders (Sørensen, 2015;Wallenbeck et al, 2015) to the most objective and comprehensive methodologies (de Vries, 1989;Houška et al, 2010;Amer et al, 2014). Economic weights of pig traits are calculated for various breeds kept in various productions systems and management alternatives.…”