The socio-cultural sustainability of livestock farming: an inquiry into social perceptions of dairy farming

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cg.contributor.affiliationInternational Livestock Research Institute
cg.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1017/s1751731111000371
cg.issn1751-7311
cg.issue9
cg.journalAnimal
cg.subject.ilriANIMAL PRODUCTION
cg.subject.ilriDAIRYING
cg.subject.ilriLIVESTOCK
cg.volume5
dc.contributor.authorBoogaard, Birgit K.
dc.contributor.authorOosting, Simon J.
dc.contributor.authorBock, B.B.
dc.contributor.authorWiskerke, J.S.C.
dc.date.accessioned2011-10-09T13:57:49Zen
dc.date.available2011-10-09T13:57:49Zen
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/10222
dc.titleThe socio-cultural sustainability of livestock farming: an inquiry into social perceptions of dairy farmingen
dcterms.abstractOver the past 50 years, the scale and intensity of livestock farming have increased significantly. At the same time, Western societies have become more urbanised and fewer people have close relatives involved in farming. As a result, most citizens have little knowledge or direct experience of what farming entails. In addition, more people are expressing concerns over issues such as farm animal welfare. This has led to increasing public demand for more sustainable ways of livestock farming. To date, little research has been carried out on the social pillar of sustainable livestock farming. The aim of this study is to provide insights into the sociocultural sustainability of livestock farming systems. This study reviews the key findings of earlier published interdisciplinary research about the social perceptions of dairy farming in the Netherlands and Norway (Boogaard et al., 2006, 2008, 2010a and 2010b) and synthesises the implications for sociocultural sustainability of livestock farming. This study argues that the (sociocultural) sustainable development of livestock farming is not an objective concept, but that it is socially and culturally constructed by people in specific contexts. It explains the social pillar of the economics/ecological/social model sustainability in terms of the fields of tensions that exist between modernity, traditions and naturality – ‘the MTN knot’ – each of which has positive and negative faces. All three angles of vision can be seen in people's attitudes to dairy farming, but the weight given to each differs between individuals and cultures. Hence, sociocultural sustainability is context dependent and needs to be evaluated according to its local meaning. Moreover, sociocultural sustainability is about people's perceptions of livestock farming. Lay people might perceive livestock farming differently and ascribe different meanings to it than experts do, but their ‘reality’ is just as real. Finally, this study calls for an ongoing collaboration between social and animal scientists in order to develop livestock farming systems that are more socioculturally sustainable.en
dcterms.accessRightsOpen Access
dcterms.bibliographicCitationBoogaard, B.K., Oosting, S.J., Bock, B.B. and Wiskerke, J.S.C. 2011. The socio-cultural sustainability of livestock farming: An inquiry into social perceptions of dairy farming. Animal 5(9):1458-1466.en
dcterms.extentp. 1458-1466
dcterms.issued2011
dcterms.languageen
dcterms.licenseCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0
dcterms.publisherElsevier
dcterms.typeJournal Article

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