From research to farm : ex ante evaluation of strategic deworming in pig finishing

This paper upgrades generic and partial information from parasitological research for farm-specific decision support, using two methods from managerial sciences: partial budgeting and frontier analysis. The analysis focuses on strategic deworming in pig finishing and assesses both effects on economic performance and nutrient efficiency. The application of partial budgeting and frontier analysis is based on a production-theoretical system analysis which is necessary to integrate parasitological research results to assess aggregate economic and environmental impacts. Results show that both statistically significant and insignificant parasitological research results have to be taken into account. Partial budgeting and frontier analysis appear to be complementary methods: partial budgeting yields more discriminatory and communicative results, while frontier methods provide additional diagnostics through exploring optimization possibilities and economic-environmental trade-offs. Strategic deworming results in a win-win effect on economic and environmental performances. Gross margin increases with 3 to 12 € per average present finisher per year, depending on the cyclic pig price conditions. The impact on the nutrient balance ranges from +0.2 to –0.5 kg nitrogen per average present finisher per year. The observed efficiency improvements are mainly technical and further economic and environmental optimizations can be achieved through input re-allocation. A user-friendly spreadsheet is provided to translate the generic experimental information to farm-specific conditions

Cognitive mapping of organic vegetable production in Flanders to support farmers strategy design

Organic farmers inherently have to cope with complex agricultural production system processes. Next to pursuing economic performance, farm management also encompasses optimization of the farm's ecological and social performance. The question arises how to maintain a certain balance between the multiple purposes. For this consideration, farmers as well as researchers need to have a good understanding of the whole farm functioning. Therefore this study aims to model the factors and their inter-relations influencing an organic farmers' decision-making process. These factors and inter-relations were modelled by using the qualitative cognitive mapping technique. Cognitive mapping can be used to develop maps of socio-ecological systems based on people's knowledge of ecosystems. Different stakeholders (farmers and experts) were interviewed in order to represent and visualize their tacit knowledge. Through in-depth interviews, stakeholders were questioned on the critical success factors of organic farm management and how these factors relate to each other. Based on these interviews, individual cognitive maps were constructed which were subsequently merged to build a social cognitive map. The social cognitive map represents the stakeholders' perception of the agricultural production system. It covers a broad range of factors (economic, agro-technical and biophysical factors, next to a few social factors), of which the most central ones are crop choice, crop rotation, marketing and technology and mechanization

Optimising finishing pig delivery weight : participatory decision problem analysis

The seemingly straightforward question of optimal pig delivery weight is more complex than meets the eye. Despite abundant research insights, the industry continues to request additional applied scientific decision support on the delivery weight problem. The current objective is to investigate whether and how the complex decision of delivery weight can be reshaped (reframed) into a more tangible and comprehensible system of factors that matter for making the right decision. We used a participatory decision problem analysis, which resulted in modelling blueprints that incorporate factors prioritised by stakeholders for determining optimal delivery weights. How to efficiently organise such a 'problem reframing process' is case-specific: it depends on the objective, the initial problem understanding by the stakeholders, and their learning potential. Efficient co-learning is a prerequisite for successful participatory problem analysis. Our study reveals that the first step in such a process of 'problem reframing' should therefore be to answer the question of how to effectively organise co-learning among stakeholders and researchers, instead of starting with a correct and detailed representation of the problem. Useful guidelines for participatory problem reframing processes are (1) providing sufficient participatory learning steps, (2) having few and clearly defined objectives per learning step, (3) providing adapted learning tools per step, (4) establishing a common language and (5) deliberately choosing stakeholders based on prior knowledge of the problem or its context, potential motivation or incentives to be part of the participatory process step and potential role in up-scaling the co-learning process to a larger group of beneficiaries

Unraveling the impact of variable external input use on the cost efficiency of dairy farms in Europe

Publication history: Accepted - 11 October 2020; Published online - 12 October 2020There has been a global shift towards intensification in the dairy sector in recent years which may have considerable impact on the cost efficiency and economic returns of farms. Considering this, the goal of this study is to offer an empirical analysis of the effect of variable external input use on dairy farms. Employing a novel Activity Analysis Model (AAM), the study analysis was conducted in two distinct but complementary steps. In the first step, we discriminated two technologies (low and high inputs) which allow us to classify a sample of dairy farms according to their level of intensification, while in the second step, we evaluated two cost efficient frontiers instead of assessing individual farm inefficiency scores. With this approach, we explore different technologies within a sample of EU dairy farms. Our results, on average, shows that agricultural practices using low inputs dominates the high input ones for farms operating on a large scale while a slight dominance of high input over low inputs exist for small scale farmers. While we reckon that low input can be cost competitive with their high input counterparts, we also note that regional differences do exist. Thus, showing that the significant gap between the two discriminating frontiers depends not only on farm size but also on farm region. We found that increased cost efficiency can reduce the negative environmental impact of EU-dairy farms while simultaneously reducing farmers’ production costs. The results of the study can therefore provide a direction to policymakers and dairy farmers alike as regards the efficient use of external inputs which may consequently reduce environmental burdens associated with dairy farms.This work was supported by the European Commission project Sustainable Organic and LI Dairying (SOLID) funded Framework 7 Contract no. 266367

Unraveling the impact of variable external input use on the cost efficiency of dairy farms in Europe

There has been a global shift towards intensification in the dairy sector in recent years which may have considerable impact on the cost efficiency and economic returns of farms. Considering this, the goal of this study is to offer an empirical analysis of the effect of variable external input use on dairy farms. Employing a novel Activity Analysis Model (AAM), the study analysis was conducted in two distinct but complementary steps. In the first step, we discriminated two technologies (low and high inputs) which allow us to classify a sample of dairy farms according to their level of intensification, while in the second step, we evaluated two cost efficient frontiers instead of assessing individual farm inefficiency scores. With this approach, we explore different technologies within a sample of EU dairy farms. Our results, on average, shows that agricultural practices using low inputs dominates the high input ones for farms operating on a large scale while a slight dominance of high input over low inputs exist for small scale farmers. While we reckon that low input can be cost competitive with their high input counterparts, we also note that regional differences do exist. Thus, showing that the significant gap between the two discriminating frontiers depends not only on farm size but also on farm region. We found that increased cost efficiency can reduce the negative environmental impact of EU-dairy farms while simultaneously reducing farmers' production costs. The results of the study can therefore provide a direction to policymakers and dairy farmers alike as regards the efficient use of external inputs which may consequently reduce environmental burdens associated with dairy farms