Report on “beacon systems” : Best sustainable practice examples on pig farms

Pig farmers are working in a difficult field. Prices paid for pigs are low and fluctuating. Society has increasing expectations regarding environmental impact and animal welfare. Therefore, pig farmers need recommendations on how to optimise all pillars of sustainability (economy, environment, society, animal) in a balanced way. Yet, there is very little on-farm data to support informed holistic decisions. The ERA-Net project “Sustainable pig production systems” (SusPigSys) aimed at collecting, summarising and disseminating evidence-based information on successful strategies for improving sustainability across all pillars in various pig production systems across the EU. This report presents pig farms in order to generate ideas and inspiration. The farms had good SusPigSys sustainability analysis results in two or three pillars. No farm ranked high in all four pillars. This represents the fact, that many aspects of sustainability may be conflicting. In order to achieve long term viability of a farm it will be more important to have a certain level of sustainability in all pillars rather than being the top in one or two but bottom in others.