Transforming sustainability from concept to application through animal modeling in the swine industry - Pre-conference Symposium
Dr. Neil Ferguson, Trouw Nutrition
Within the livestock industry, sustainability is a relatively new and emerging field driven by pressure from climate change, policy making, carbon tax and sustainable financial investing. However, the realities of implementing any meaningful improvements in sustainable pig production are challenging because of the many uncertainties around the assumptions and predictions of emissions, differences in global standard methodologies, constantly evolving new scientific insights and improved databases used within Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). Nevertheless, there are still large opportunities to implement nutritional solutions and farm management practices that can significantly reduce a farm’s environmental footprint. To help facilitate these sustainability improvements at the pig farm level, a holistic digital twin approach is proposed that integrates animal biology, stochasticity, feed formulation, and LCA to simulate the system interactions and predict the various environmental impact categories (carbon dioxide equivalents, acidification, eutrophication, water scarcity, land use, and non-renewable energy resource use).
Keywords: pig, sustainability, LCA, carbon footprint, model.