Research funded by Defra and BPEX has found that increasing the use of home-grown pulses in pig feed can maintain growth and health, whilst reducing the need to import expensive and unsustainable feed.

image expired

The Green Pig Project, which has run from 2008, has yielded promising results from commercial trials, although researchers claim more needs to be done to make potential sustainable feed crops more viable for farmers in the field.

In the project’s most recent commercial trials, conducted in Staffordshire, peas and faba beans were shown to be a viable alternative to soya beans, which are mostly imported from South American Countries, where increases in production have, in some cases, led to deforestation of ecologically sensitive land.

In trials on finishing pigs, diets with a rate of 30 per cent pea and 30 per cent faba bean content were found to be comparable to soya. Currently, most producers use only 5 to 11 per cent legumes in pig feed and the maximum appropriate level was previously thought to be around 15 per cent.

Although the study’s results are promising, low and unreliable yields of the legumes which could provide sustainable feed alternatives are at present a barrier to wider uptake. Scientists in Wales are looking at ways of achieving this as part of ongoing research into sustainable, home-grown feeds.

Nevertheless, the researchers said that, although conventional farmers are unlikely to adopt the proposed methods in the short term, their results may be of interest to the organic sector.

A case study on the latest trial is available here.

Tweet