This chapter describes the role of good stockmanship on the improvement of animal welfare, the detrimental effects of fear on productivity, the importance of positive attitudes towards animals for improving both welfare and productivity; how to train stockpeople to have more positive attitudes and...

This chapter discusses the animal welfare requirements for organic farms; how to select genetic lines of animals that are suitable for organic farming; grazing more than one species on a pasture; understand the differences between EU, US and Canadian organic programmes and the importance of using...

This chapter describes how standards implemented by major meat buyers can be used to improve welfare, how different marketing systems can either improve welfare or make it worse, how to use incentive payments to improve welfare, the negative effects of biological overload of an animal on its...

This chapter discusses the new technological solutions that can solve problems in animal reproduction management, activity and location tracking, feed and feed management and health and disease monitoring. Some practical and feasible commercial solutions that can address some of the issues...

This chapter describes the application of technology in pig farming, including understand how computer systems learn, the different types of sensors to monitor health and behaviour, the basic operation of precision livestock farming (PLF) and future possibilities.

This chapter presents a general overview of the human factors in farm management, including the question of what personal qualities are necessary to become an expert farm manager and how managerial skill might be improved. The chapter also presents an overview of the book's chapters, and introduces ...

This chapter is devoted to reviewing the possible decision criteria and processes used by farmers. These criteria range from the concept of maximizing a general measure of output, utility, through to the simple approach of producing a minimum requirement of an output such as leisure time based on...

This chapter outlines the competencies necessary for successful farm management. Obvious areas are skills such as accurate observation, and an ability to forecast or anticipate outcomes following specified decisions. These and other competencies are reviewed using farmers' views. The chapter also...

Farmers make many decisions using their intuition. This chapter focuses on this topic by outlining a quantifiable model for use in assessing the important factors influencing a farmer's intuitive skills. The results of using farmer survey information to quantify the model are discussed, with...

This practitioner reflection reports on 30 years of training agroecological farmers in various African contexts. It argues that good theory should be drawn out of good practice, to help farmers to adapt to climate change while producing nourishing food sustainably. Currently, training is often...