The role of diversity and circularity to enhance the resilience of organic pig producers in Europe
2022 (English)In: Animal - Open Space, ISSN 2772-6940, Vol. 1, no 1, article id 100009Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
This paper investigates how pig housing relates to diversity and circularity of farms and how this influences the capacity of European organic pig producers to cope with economic, legislation, labour and climate-related shocks. It identifies resilience strategies of pig producers in Europe by analysing resilience capacity and attributes to different shocks, namely input and output price shocks, disease outbreaks, climate change, legislation change and labour fluctuations. Based on narratives of 18 pig producers, this paper finds three resilience strategies: an efficiency-based strategy, a nutrient substitution strategy and a farm diversification strategy. Non-resiliency is mostly found among the producers with an all-year outdoor production system following the nutrient substitution strategy related to low feed self-sufficiency. The producers follow an efficiency-based strategy when they cannot accumulate reserves sufficient to cope with shocks. Non-resilience among the farm diversification strategy is related to direct marketing that is labour intensive requires the ability to pay decent wages. To increase the resilience of pig producers in Europe, policies should recognise that these different strategies exist and tailor policies differently for different types of producers.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. Vol. 1, no 1, article id 100009
Keywords [en]
Adaptive cycle, Diversification, Nitrogen cycle, Pig farming systems, Pork production
National Category
Agricultural Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-59126DOI: 10.1016/j.anopes.2022.100009OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-59126DiVA, id: diva2:1653157
Note
This research was funded through the CORE Organic Cofundproject ‘‘Proven welfare and resilience in organic pig production‘‘(POWER). The authors acknowledge the financial support for this project provided by transnational funding bodies, being partners of the H2020 ERA-net project, CORE Organic Cofund, and the cofund from the European Commission.
2022-04-212022-04-212023-07-06Bibliographically approved