Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
In most countries, there are hardly any local markets for certified organic livestock products
(e.g. in most African countries), and export is limited for all livestock products as a result of
disease status. Certified organic products consist mainly of fruits and cereals for export to
privileged consumers such as those in north-western Europe. The certification procedures are
too costly for most farmers, especially when nobody wants to pay extra for organic products,
organic producers lack support or premium prices are difficult to obtain. Parrott
et
al
. (2005)
discuss the issue of non-certified organic farming and categorise four main areas they call the
'hidden world of ecological farming':
1 explicit organic approaches (e.g. membership of certification agency);
2 like-minded approaches (e.g. permaculture movement in Zimbabwe);
3 low external input sustainable agriculture (weight on local resources and processes); and
4 traditional farming ('food grown without chemicals', or 'organic by default').
In this chapter, we will keep the basic ideas of organic animal husbandry in mind and also
include the potential organic livestock production with examples from areas that are not certi-
fied. Organic farming can in this context be seen as not only a way of producing 'certified
animal products' but also as a way of farming sustainably, emphasising a harmonious way of
using land and keeping animals.
There is great diversity among countries and regions regarding different ways and condi-
tions for farming; farms locations range from mountain to grassland areas, and farming
systems from traditional to intensive systems. The aim of this chapter is to present and discuss
aspects of animal health and feeding in organic farming systems. A short overview of current
knowledge about animal health, welfare and disease in organic agriculture is presented. For
nutrition especially, we will focus on the interactions between nutrition and animal health and
welfare. We have chosen to concentrate mostly on dairy cattle and grassland feeding, but also
provide other examples.
Organic liestock production and animal disease patterns - an
oeriew
Organic liestock production and products on a global leel
It is difficult to get an overview of the development and composition of organic livestock pro-
duction at a global level. Not even in Europe, where organic farming is well established in many
countries, do detailed official statistics exist regarding organic livestock farming. Organic farms
and land being converted to organic farming was about 3.5% of the land in Europe in 2003,
covering 5.8 million hectares on 155,100 farms in 25 countries in the European Union (EU).
The area and number of farmers converting differs between countries. For example, during
2003, land used for organics increased in Germany, France, Portugal, Greece, Austria and Spain,
but decreased in Denmark, the United Kingdom (UK) and the Netherlands.
The availability of organic livestock products on the market varies extremely on a global
level. In the EU, the most important markets exist in Germany, France, the UK and Italy, as
well as Denmark, Austria and Switzerland. Considerable variation exists among product cate-
gories. For crops, the average market share in the EU was between 1% and 1.8% in 2001, where
the organic share of the total market for beef was 1.6% in 2003, 1.2% for milk and milk
products, 1.3% for eggs, but 0.6% or less for pig and poultry meat (Hamm and Gronefeld
2004). It is difficult to establish a balance between supply and demand for the organic markets
for milk, beef and sheep and goat meat. The pattern of organic products sold as conventional
in 2001 differed considerably between countries. However, in the EU, an average of 32% of the
