Breeding in organic farming: different strategies, different demands.

Summary

Abstract – Due to regulations organic farming is sub-jected to a different regime then conventional farm-ing. This results in different environments for ani-mals. The question is whether one overall breeding goal is sufficient to cover all different demands of organic farmers. A survey among 132 Dutch organic dairy farmers revealed that 55% of the farmers are specialized in milk production and 45% is running a multi-functional farm. The specialized milk production farms were significantly more intensive in farming compared to the multifunctional farms. Farmers from both strategies were also asked to value different breeding aspects of animals. In general farmers val-ued different aspects more or less the same: they wanted a robust, long living cow, with good udder health and fertility. However, farmers wanted to achieve this goal in many different ways. From farm-ers specialized in milk production, 29% used pure bred Holstein cows while 51 % chose for cross breed-ing with more robust breeds. Also 57% of the multi-functional farms chose for cross breeding, but an-other 30% chose for native Dutch breeds. These dif-ference in the use and crossing of different breeds questions the overall breeding goal. It is important to know why farmers opt for different breeds, pure or crossing. We developed some hypothesis on this, to stimulate further discussion and research