Organic farming can be defined as an approach to agriculture where the aim is to create integrated, humane, environmentally and economically sustainable agricultural production systems producing acceptable levels of crop, livestock and human nutrition, protection from pests and diseases, and an appropriate return to the human and other resources employed. Maximum reliance is placed on locally or farm-derived, renewable resources and the management of self-regulating ecological and biological processes and interactions. Reliance on external inputs, whether chemical or organic, is reduced as far as possible.
In many European countries, organic agriculture is known as ecological
agriculture, reflecting this reliance on ecosystem management rather than external inputs. In order to achieve the animal welfare, environmental, resource-use sustainability and other objectives, certain key principles are adhered to. Those relevant to poultry production include:
• Management of livestock as land-based systems (i.e. excluding feedlots and intensively-housed pig and poultry units) so that stock numbers are related to the carrying capacity of the land and
not inflated by reliance on 'purchased' hectares from outside the farm system, thus avoiding the potential for nutrient concentration, excess manure production and pollution.
• Reliance on farm- or locally-derived renewable resources, such as biologically-fixed atmospheric nitrogen and home-grown livestock feeds, thereby reducing the need for non-renewable resources as direct inputs or for transport;
• Reliance on feed sources produced organically, which are suited to the animal’s evolutionary adaptations (including restrictions on use of animal proteins) and which minimise competition for food suitable for human consumption;
• Maintenance of health through preventive management and good husbandry in preference to
preventive treatment, thereby reducing the potential for the development of resistance to
therapeutic medicines as well as contamination of workers, food products and the environment;
• use of housing systems which allow natural behaviour patterns to be followed and which give
high priority to animal welfare considerations, with the emphasis on free-range systems for
poultry;
• use of breeds and rearing systems suited to the production systems employed, in terms of
disease resistance, productivity, hardiness, and suitability for ranging.
Comments