Abstract
The development of specific actions to increase animal health and welfare is indicated as a strategy to improve the efficiency and sustainability of many livestock systems, including sheep farming. In this paper, efficiency measures are provided to confirm the hypothesis that farms that are higher-performing in terms of animal welfare and management are also more technically efficient. A two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach was adopted with the following twofold objectives: 1) to evaluate the efficiency and super-efficiency of 76 meat-producing sheep farms situated in marginal lands in central Italy, through DEA and Super-DEA (S-DEA) models; and 2) to assess the influence of animal welfare and management indicators on technical efficiency values through the application of a Tobit regression model. An overall efficiency performance varying within a range of 0.44–1 was estimated, with an average value of 0.80, implying a potential increase of 20% in terms of output production from both management and scale improvements. The ‘pure’ technical inefficiency was found to contribute three times more than scale inefficiency in determining the overall technical inefficiency. Adopting a more extensive farming system and increasing replacement rate were found to affect negatively the efficiency scores. On the other hand, having less than 5% of animals with body condition score beyond acceptable limits, presence of access control structures, well managed lambing pens, and dedicated feed stocking areas resulted in a positive influence on efficiency. Improvements in animal welfare aspects did not appear to be farm-scale-dependent. Highlights DEA and Super-DEA models were applied to assess sheep farm technical efficiency in Central Italy. An overall potential 20% increase in output production was estimated. Animal welfare factors were found to significantly affect efficiency performance.
Highlights
The sheep sector in Italy in 2018 is represented by 7,179,150 head, and the population has remained almost unchanged over the past 5 years (Eurostat 2018)
The study population consisted of 76 selected sheep farms that took part in the ‘Woolfair Project’, which addressed the improvement in resilience, animal welfare and competitiveness of sheep farming in marginal lands in four regions of central Italy (Abruzzo, Lazio, Marche and Umbria)
By focussing on the sheep farming sector in central Italy, this paper integrated DEA and Tobit models to test the hypothesis that farms which are high-performing in terms of animal welfare indicators are more technically efficient
Summary
The sheep sector in Italy in 2018 is represented by 7,179,150 head, and the population has remained almost unchanged over the past 5 years (Eurostat 2018). Of the number of animals raised, 93.5% are concentrated in central and southern Italy. The specialised sheep and goat farms cover almost 12% of Italian agricultural area (Eurostat 2018) and are often located in disadvantaged areas subject to abandonment, making them important in terms of environmental protection. Small ruminant production relies on a grass-based feeding system in areas with poor agronomic potential and high environmental value. Hay supplementation is very common, especially when pasture is scarce, while the use of concentrate feeds is mainly reserved for dairy breeds such as Sarda or Comisana. Management systems for meat-type or dual purpose breeds are less intensive and mostly based on forages
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