Increased Foraging in Outdoor Organic Pig Production—Modeling Environmental Consequences

Abstract

Consumers’ motivations for buying organic products include a wish of acquiring healthy, environmentally friendly products from production systems that also ensure a high level of animal welfare. However, the current Danish organic pig production faces important challenges regarding environmental impact of the system. High ammonia emissions arise from outdoor concrete areas with growing-finishing pigs and sows on pasture possess an increased risk of nitrogen (N) leaching. Direct foraging in the range area is suggested as a way to improve the nutrient efficiency at farm level and to support a more natural behavior of the pig. Thus, by modeling, we investigated the environmental consequences of two alternative scenarios with growing-finishing pigs foraging in the range area and different levels of crops available for foraging; grass-clover (lowest integration of forage) or a combination of lucerne, grass-clover and Jerusalem artichokes (highest integration of forage). It was possible to have growing-finishing pigs on free-range without increasing N leaching compared to the current practice. The alternative system with lucerne, grass-clover and Jerusalem artichokes showed the lowest carbon footprint with 3.12 CO ₂ eq kg ⁻¹ live weight pig compared to the current Danish pasture based system with 3.69 kg CO ₂ eq kg ⁻¹ live weight pig. Due to positive impact on soil carbon sequestration, the second alternative system based on grass-clover  showed a similar carbon foot print compared to current practice with 3.68 kg CO ₂ eq kg ⁻¹ live weight pig. It is concluded that in practice there is room for development of organic pig production systems where direct foraging plays a central role.