23.09.2013
Category: Pig
By: Boris Duflot, Christine Roguet

French pig production: high environmental standards and their consequences


fattening pigs

France is the third biggest pig producing country in the EU. Higher environmental standards than in other EU member countries has hampered development of the pork sector and decreased the rate of structural change.

In 2012 France produced 25 million pigs, on approximately 11 500 pig farms. Half of the farms are farrow-to-finish systems but they concentrate 85 % of the sows and 66 % of the fattening pigs. This system produces a lower share of the fattening pigs, because some of the piglets produced are finished on contracted fattening farms. The typical French pig production system is a farrow-to-finish farm with 220 sows and 60 ha agricultural area on average.

French pig production is concentrated in the North Western part of the country with 57 % of the pig population being in Brittany. The average pig density is 440 pigs per ha arable land and since Brittany also produces a significant share of French dairy and poultry production, the animal density is very high. In some districts the production of nitrogen exceeds 170 kg per ha.

Since 1997, areas of Brittany have been subjected to specific legislation which forbids further increases in the pig population. In addition, the spreading area per farm is limited to between 40 ha and 130 ha, depending on the district and mandatory thresholds are set for treatment (between 12 500 and 20 000 kg nitrogen produced per farm). If total nitrogen production is over the mandatory treatment threshold, the farmer must find an alternative to spreading, such as treatment or transfer. As a consequence, manure treatment has been implemented on many farms. Of the 550 individual and cooperative treatment stations in France, 450 are operating in Brittany. About 15 % of the pig manure produced in France is treated.

Besides these constraints, obtaining permission to construct new buildings is a tough challenge for French pig farms. The thresholds in France are much lower than those of the EU directives. Above 450 animal-equivalent (AE; 1 sow equals 3 AE, 1 fattening pig equals 1 AE, 1 piglet equals 0.2 AE) farm projects are submitted to impact studies and public inquiries. The severity of this regulation partly explains the limited structural changes of pig farms in France.

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