UNIWERSYTET MIKO ŁAJA KOPERNIKA Nicolaus Copernicus University Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland Written by:Arturo Remírez Ruiz Erasmus student Agronomic Engineer Torun (Pl), June 2011 Project supervisors Dr hab. Prof.ADAM CZARNECKI AND Dr.ANNA LEWANDOWSKA-CZARNECKA Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland Acknowledgements I want to thanks to people who led me in this project, Dr hab. prof. Adam Czarnecki and special thanks also to Dr. Anna Lewandowska-Czarnecka. Also Jose Luis Ochoa García and Kinga Ostrowicka, Adrianna Ostrowicka and Jolanta Kwiecieo who help me to translate many polish information into English. Also thank you to farmers which received us in their farm for their hospitality. Torun, June 2011 Arturo Remirez Page 2 Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland INDEX Acknowledgements p.2 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………p.4 1.1. Introduction p.4 1.2. Agriculture in Europe p.5 1.2.1. Animal production p.5 1.2.1.1. Cattle production p.7 1.2.1.2. Milk production p.8 1.2.1.3. Pig farms p.10 1.2.1.3.1. Production of pigmeat p.11 1.2.2. Crop production in Europe p.12 1.3. Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) p.16 1.3.1. Direct pays p.17 1.3.1.1. Conditionality p.17 1.3.1.2. Modulation p.17 1.3.2. Single Euro payment p18 1.4. Farm structure in Poland, some statics p.19 1.5. Structure of local community Gmina p.22 2. Scientific approach and methods……………………………………………………….p.23 2.1 Model of farming system p.23 2.2. Methods and protocol p.24 2.2.1. Data collection p.24 2.2.2. Data processing p.24 2.2.3. Method of energy flows p.25 2.3.3. Energy equivalents p.27 2.3. Materials p.32 2.3.1. Data of Steklinek (Czernikowo gmina) p.32 2.3.2. Farms information p.36 3. Results ………………………………………………………………………………………………p.60 3.1. Tellarini´s mode results p.68 4. Discussion of results……………………………………………………………………………p.84 5. Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………p.88 6. Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………..p.89 Page 3 Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland 1-Introduction 1.1-Introduction Agriculture in Europe has been very aggressive with the environment and also with the fossil fuels. In the beginning of the agriculture globalization, was very common to produce caring about the environment, this activity produce a great impact in the soil structure as well as the environmental situation. In Europe was very common to plow the land many times as the farmer consider it necessary, so it meant waste great amount of energy and other inputs. Besides, they didn´t think about the environment health so they used to use big quantities of pesticides, fertilizers. This mentality did that many aquifers and lots of rivers were polluted and they were unable to human use, so this kind of agriculture has change bit a bit. Other big problem of old agriculture was the big erosion of the fields, losing its structure and the capacity to stand crops, decreasing performance of fields and providing lot of natural fertilizers, so occurs the same problem mentioned above. Nowadays this is changing; the trend is a sustainable agriculture with few quantities of inputs and worried about the environment. One of these tenancies is the non-plow; this is one of the solutions for the erosion problem in Europe. Also, Furthermore the EU Government is promoting sustainable farming giving some special subsides to these farmers according to CAP mentioned in a following section. Poland is emerging from a communist mentality to a capitalist one. It means, now the farmers are thinking about produce like a business more than satisfying their own needs. So Poland now is like EU twenty years ago, farmers are using big amount of fossil fuels and big quantities of inputs, although day by day are thinking about sustainability and how to perform their crops in a respectful way with the environment because they have lots of problems with erosion soil and maybe in a closer future with water pollution because of fertilizers. Nowadays, Poland is developing its economy and as a consequence of this, enterprises whose want to set its factories in Estern Europe choose Poland for its possibilities. Page 4 Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland Therefore, we are going to do a research about the situation of the livestock activity in the Northern of Poland, doing a flow matter study about main inputs and outputs of polish farms. Kujawsko- Pomorskie Also, we want to look for concrete results doing some templates with the farmers, asking important points about inputs and outputs above mentioned. Firstly we have to know some important points about livestock situation in Europe and Poland, so we facilitate some data below to have few ideas to understand better the research. 1.2-Agriculture in Europe 1.2.1-Animal production The general trend in Europe is the specialization of the agricultural holdings in some livestock farming. As we can see in the statistics, one European agricultural holding out of every five is a specialized livestock farm; for breeding herbivores like cattle, sheep and goats, Its is needed a very big area of meadows. On the other hand, in many cases pigs and poultry don´t use meadows, they are breeding with a “non-soil” husbandry techniques. Therefore, in the northern countries of the union which are more humid than the others is most common to find specialized herbivores holdings, as in France that approximately a third of farms are specialize in this way, compared with 40% in Belgium and Germany, and 50% to 60% in United Kingdom, Austria… Page 5 Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland As we can see in the graph, in the wet countries are more common breed herbivores, as we can see in U.K. the percentage of all farms specialized in breeding herbivores are between 50- 93 percent, like Netherlands and Austria. Nevertheless, they are not the most manufacturers of bovine production, so it does not depends on the number of farms holdings, it depends on the breed system of production and the specialization of the farms. This explains the huge production of France over U.K. and also that Italy is over U.K. although having a very big difference in the percentage of herbivores farms. On the other hand pigs and poultry farms are less common and 80% of them, can be found in just three countries: Romania (46%), Poland (17%) and Hungary (17%). Page 6 Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland 1.2.1.1- Cattle production Cattle live in rainfall places and where the grass is good in comparison with sheeps that could live in places where the vegetation scarce and is few nutritive. So this is one of the reasons why we find the most of the cattle heads in the moisture land, where the wind is rich of water and rain a lot. Thereby, those places have very good meadows and are very rich in pastures for cattle. Cattle numbers have fallen slowly over the past decade, while the numbers of pigs have been established. From2008 to 2009 the number of cattle in the EU decreased by 0,7%. In the EU we divided cattle meat in two: cattle under one year old are called “young cattle” or veal, and the rest “adult cattle” or beef. Ireland, the Netherlands and France produce over 52% of the veal produced in EU. France, Germany and Italy produce similar proportion of beef (51%). In the graph below, we can see the data mentioned above. Page 7 Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland 1.2.1.2-Milk production Milk production counts for third of the total value of animal production in the Union. The value of its milk production nearly €7 billion, puts France in second place behind Germany. Its production is valued in €8 billion or 18% of the EU total. The production structures are different in each countries, for example, in France the 91% of the dairy cattle is on farms with between 20 and 100 heads, comparing with German that they have more large dairy holdings represented by 64% of the holdings. In Czech Republic and Slovakia the holding predomination are smaller than the others mentioned above, represented by the 10% of the total. Also in other countries like Romania, Lithuania…predominate the small livestock farms. The destination of the collected milk can be divided in several destinations: -Fresh products that were used almost 29% of the production. -Direct milk and cream for direct consumption about 24%. -Other fresh products (yoghurt and milk based drinks) 5%. Over two thirds of the milk was used for manufactured products, mainly butter and cheese. Page 8 Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland There are two different ways of producing milk. From cows on grazing land which requires sufficiently productive grassland and from cows in “non-soil”. The second method needs either arable land for the production of forages or concentrated feed, imports feed of other regions or countries. Source: eurostat 2005 Page 9 Description and valuation of livestock activity in Gmina Czernikowo, Northern of Poland 1.2.1.3-Pig farms. In Europe, pig meat is produced on several types of farms from one member to another.