From concentrates to crops: Rethinking pig production by letting pigs forage

Event Date : October 7, 2026

Event Time : 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Event Location : Online

The European pig sector is facing challenges linked to sustainability, climate change, animal welfare, and market volatility. Building resilience in pig production systems is essential to ensure food security, reduce environmental impacts, and support farmers livelihoods.

Organic pig production remains heavily dependent on concentrate feeds based on cereals and soybeans. This reliance challenges farm resilience, increases feed-food competition, and underutilizes pigs’ natural capacity for foraging.

In this Re-Livestock project webinar, we will explore innovative strategies for how free-range pigs can contribute more actively to their own nutrition by foraging above and below ground, creating opportunities for more resilient and sustainable production systems.

The webinar will be structured around three lectures:

• The first lecture, “Fattening pigs foraging on above- and below-ground crops: Effects on growth performance and feed efficiency,” will explore the potential of forage crops such as fodder beet, Jerusalem artichoke, willow leaves, and grass-clover-herb mixtures to contribute to pig nutrition, highlighting their biomass yields, nutritional value, and role in forage-based free-range pig systems.
• The second lecture, “Herbage intake of grazing sows and effects of multispecies pasture mixtures on sow performance”, explores the grazing potential of sows, with emphasis on gestation, and zooms in on a recent study on gestating sows grazing multispecies pastures evaluating the herbage intake of sows and the effect on maternal growth and reproductive performance.
• The third lecture, “The Value of Grass: A Grazing Management Tool for Organic Sows,” will explore the importance of optimizing grazing management for pregnant sows to make better use of grass as a feed resource. The presentation will introduce a grazing management tool based on grass growth and nutritional value, designed to support farmers.

AGENDA

15:00 – Welcome (CIHEAM Zaragoza and Re-Livestock Coordinator)

15:05 – Introduction to the webinar topic: From concentrates to crops – Rethinking pig production by letting pigs forage (Anne Grete Kongsted, Aarhus University, Dept. Agroecology)

15.10 – Fattening pigs foraging on above‑ and belowground crops: Effects on growth performance and feed efficiency (Anne Grete Kongsted, Aarhus University, Dept. Agroecology)

15.25 – Q&A

15:35 – Herbage intake of grazing sows and effects of multispecies pasture mixtures on sow performance (Jakob Johannsen, Aarhus University, Dept. Animal and Veterinary Sciences and Dept. Agroecology)

15:50 – Q&A

16:00 – The value of grass: A grazing management tool for organic sows (Sarah-Lina Aagaard Schild, the Innovation Centre for Organic Farming)

16:15 – Q&A

16:25 – General discussion

16:45 – Wrap up and closure

Webinar Leaflet