SusPigSys aims at collecting, summarising and disseminating evidence-based information on successful strategies for improving sustainability in various pig production systems across the EU.
The overall aim of SusPigSys is, to develop integrative assessment and analysis tools for identifying commercially viable and resource efficient pig production systems with high societal acceptance (including intact tails and reduced need for medication) to support improvement of sustainability across a wide range of pig production systems. The tools will be enhanced by connecting them to existing international databases, such as InterPIG or agri benchmark Pig.
Despite pig farmers’ needs for recommendations on how to optimise the balance between apparently conflicting pillars of sustainability (economy, environment, society), there is very little on-farm data to support informed holistic decisions. SusPigSys therefore aims at collecting, summarising and disseminating evidence-based information on successful strategies for improving sustainability in various pig production systems across the EU. Project outcomes include an integrative on-farm assessment and feedback tool to help pig farmers to improve their economic, environmental, and societal sustainability (e.g. animal health and welfare), as well as their job satisfaction. Farmers in all partner countries will be actively involved throughout the project to ensure that outcomes meet farmers’ needs. After researchers and stakeholders have identified points to be addressed, a detailed sustainability assessment protocol will be developed based on existing protocols and including the guidelines provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The protocol will be applied on a total of 70 farms in seven European countries (AT, DE, FI, IT, PL, NL, UK) to generate a database from which a valid, condensed protocol can be developed using multivariate statistics. The condensed protocol will then be applied on 175 farms with various production systems in seven countries. Data from farm visits will be used for developing an integrative analysis toolbox for summarising farm data, and the protocol and toolbox will be linked with an existing international pig production database to allow enhanced benchmarking. The integrative analysis toolbox will include information on possible trade-offs between the three pillars of sustainability and be integrated in a software to form a farmer decision support tool with farm-individual feedback. In addition, descriptions of best practices will be published in various formats to help farmers learn from each other across borders.
FiBL koordiniert/leitet zusammen mit FCSR WP4: Datenauswertung hinsichtlich einzelner Bereiche sowie integrativer Analyse. Grundlage für das integrative Management-Tool
FiBL ist an folgenden Work packages als Partner beteiligt:
> WP1: Zusammenführung vorhandenen Wissens, gemeinsame Identifizierung von Zielthemen
> WP2: Entwicklung der Erhebungsprotokolle basierend auf bereits existierenden Protokollen für die Bereiche Ökonomie, Ressourceneffizienz, Tierwohl
> WP3: Datenerhebung auf Praxisbetrieben in zwei Erhebungsrunden
> WP5: Einbindung in eine bereits existierende internationale Datenbank
> WP6: Verbreitung und Publikation der Ergebnisse
> WP7: Aktive Einbindung der Stakeholder für die gesamte Dauer des Projektes
