Smallholder knowledge-practices and smallholding animals: Threats or alternatives to agricultural biosecurity?

Abstract

This paper responds to claims that smallholders in the UK farming landscape present a biosecurity threat to commercial farming, by exploring smallholders' perspectives on animal health and their practising of biosecurity, studied through focus group research in England. Biosecurity in animal agriculture has emerged as a key research theme, with attention paid to how biosecurity is both conceptualised and practised in different farming situations. Biosecurity, as an effort to make life safe, is viewed as an articulation of political and scientific discourses with on-farm practices and particular farming and food systems. The paper draws on recent theorisation of biosecurity to discuss smallholders' engagement with the health of their animals and with biosecurity practices, and to explore their relationships with vets and commercial farmers. Contesting representations of themselves and their practices as bioinsecure, smallholders instead contend that commercial farmers and farming produce more risky disease situations, and that smallholding fosters relationships of care and response-ability more likely to engender animal health and welfare. At the same time, smallholders and farmers are involved in attempts to piece together a practical biosecurity under different pressures. The paper argues that within the complex topologies of heterogeneous farming landscapes, the 'small scale' of smallholding is constructed as problematic, and that there needs to be an acknowledgement of a politics of biosecurity in which different modes of practicing farming are debateable.

From Biosecurity to Security Ecologies: An Analysis between Old Dairy Farming Traditions and Routines and Veterinary Recommendations in Spain

“…Sorting counts for nothing if these animals all end up together in the same place' (…). (Field diary, Galicia II) Considering Holloway (2019), there may be many knowledge practices that relate biosecurity with animal welfare that do not entirely consider veterinary recommendations, especially since dairy farmers try to ensure the life of their livestock in difficult times. This situation can be observed mainly on small farms such as those in the present study:…”

“…Considering Holloway (2019), there may be many knowledge practices that relate biosecurity with animal welfare that do not entirely consider veterinary recommendations, especially since dairy farmers try to ensure the life of their livestock in difficult times. This situation can be observed mainly on small farms such as those in the present study:

(…) Calves were kept in a shed together because the farmer did not have enough space for individual pens, and it was winter.

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On-farm biosecurity in livestock production: farmer behaviour, cultural identities and practices of care

“…government officials, veterinarians, animals and farmers). For instance, smallholders' biosecurity situations are constructed in specific animal-human relationships, knowledge practices and social-political pressures, which engender farmers' responsibility and care towards their animals [30].…”

Voices in the New Millenium. Shepherds in the Pela Mountains (Southwest of Soria. Central Spain)

“…In the study of the shepherd and extensive grazing, multiple directions of research can be adopted: social and spatial marginality, new social groups and individualization, new roles and imaginaries and new animal geographies. Studies on extensive grazing highlight some of the debates associated with animal geographies and spatial marginality (Yarwood & Evans, 1998, Holloway, 2019. Through extensive livestock activity, multiple human-non-human hybrid relationships that have characterized the new animal geographies are highlighted (Philo & Wilbert, 2000, Whatmore, 2002, Bock & Buller, 2013.…”