French pig production systems: a typology of pig owning farms

In 2002, a study on the 2000 agricultural census aimed to identify the main pig farming systems in France. This work characterised two levels of typology of pig production systems, with respectively four and eight classes. The one with four classes offers the most synthetic appraisal of the structure of these systems.The eight-class typology gives a finer vision of the previous classification as it divides in two the identified systems. The farms with mainly vegetal production and a pig production unit (4.1) are separated according to their size and the small structures (4.3), according to their main production (beef or pork). The big farms specialised in pig production are divided between those who also have a big cereal production and those who are truly specialised in pig production. Finally, the farms with cow milk production and pig production (4.4) are separated according to the importance of their pig production:those who have a small fattening activity and those who have formed a cow milk and pig production GAEC.The four-type classification was applied on the 1988 agricultural census. It underlined the evolution of the pig farming systems in France over twelve years, especially that of the specialised farms in pig production. The classification functions (enabling the transfer of the typology to other data bases) were also successfully tested on this census. They will allow to keep a close track of the future evolution of the identified systems, by applying them on an intermediate survey on the farm structure in France(every two year).