Farm animal welfare research increasingly recognizes that farmers’ welfare decisions are shaped by ethical orientations. This study examines associations between livestock farmers’ contextual anthropocentrism, personality traits, farm structural characteristics, and links to animal welfare attitudes. Survey data from 619 German livestock farmers were analyzed using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, correlations, and an ordinary least squares regression model. An anthropocentric orientation index (AOI) showed acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.72; mean = 3.68 on a 1–5 scale). Higher emotionality, agreeableness, and openness were negatively associated with anthropocentric orientation. Organic farming, keeping of suckling cows, dairy cows, and laying hens were also negatively associated with anthropocentric orientations. The model explained a modest share of variance (R2 = 0.147; adjusted R2 = 0.119). Correlations indicated that higher anthropocentric orientations were more closely aligned with appreciation of biological functioning indicators and less aligned with positive welfare indicators, including species-typical behavior and natural outdoor access. The findings indicate tentatively that contextual anthropocentrism among livestock farmers might be operationalized empirically and might be linked to personality, farm structure, and welfare interpretation. Future research should show if contextual anthropocentrism may inform more differentiated animal welfare communication that accounts for farmers’ distinct ethical and practical animal welfare orientations.

Online surveys in agricultural economics and social science face methodological challenges including sampling biases like recruitment and self-selection biases. Also response quality issues like straight-lining and fatigue can undermine data reliability. This quantitative, explorative study analyzed a 25-minute survey of 619 German livestock farmers recruited via three pathways: social media (informal), professional networks (formal), and a market research provider (commercial). Multinomial regression linked recruitment pathways to farm characteristics, socio-demographics, and personality traits with few significant associations. Commercially recruited farmers showed lower response quality. ANOVA revealed differences in animal welfare and ethical attitudes across recruitment groups. Farmers shared a commitment to basic animal welfare but diverged in prioritizing specific practices and ethical trade-offs like welfare vs. efficiency. Recruitment is also associated with ascribed media realism. The findings highlight the limitations of narrow sampling and stress the need for transparent reporting of sampling methods and response quality indicators to enhance research validity.

Agrivoltaics (AV) are expanding worldwide, but knowledge about the perception and acceptance of this approach is far from complete. The aim of the present study was to investigate the visual perception and acceptance of AV systems, focussing on the central research question of whether the type of grassland use influences the visual perception and acceptance of vertical interspace AV. For this purpose, three photo-based pictures of a vertical interspace AV plant were used in a laboratory experiment with 29 participants: the original photo showing the AV plant with grassland only; an edited photo with cattle added and an edited photo with silage bales added. The eye-tracking results showed that additional picture elements (i.e., cattle and silage bales) at least partially attracted visual attention, but did not distract from the technical elements of the depicted AV systems. The analysis of the acceptance ratings indicated relatively stable attitudes towards AV, which could not be easily modulated by depicting different types of grassland use within AV systems. Short-term and limited changes in attitudes towards AV appeared to result from the provision of information and mental engagement with the topic. We recommend carrying out further research based on larger, representative samples and more realistic stimuli of AV systems that would provide a better understanding of visual perception and acceptance than photos alone, such as on-site visits or VR visualisations, to enhance the external validity of the results. We also suggest conducting longitudinal studies to explore possible long-term effects on the public acceptance of AV systems.

Locally produced, healthy and affordable foods for children based on traditional recipes have the potential to improve the high rates of child malnutrition in Africa's drylands. Professional, informative packaging is needed for women's groups producing such foods to access the formal market. To identify suitable packaging designs, a conjoint experiment was combined with eye tracking. 16 packaging designs were created (D-efficient design), randomly displayed and rated for attractiveness by 98 participants. Overall, the results suggest that packaging designs for children's foods that include food safety symbols and detailed nutritional information could help Kenyan consumers build trust in the product being offered. Consumers gain information from images showing the product's ingredients and a logo composed of the colours of the Kenyan flag. The image of a cute cartoon animal helps consumers identify the product as a children's food.

Professional pig husbandry is often associated with a more or less high load of LA-MRSA. Possible risk factors for LA-MRSA colonization in pig herds have already been identified in studies suggesting that housing conditions may affect LA-MRSA prevalence. In Europe, pigs are kept under variety of conditions. The aim of this study is to identify husbandry and housing condition factors that affect colonization with LA-MRSA. 78 pig farms were selected and assigned to three categories according to housing conditions: conventional, alternative and organic. Animal and surface samples were taken and examined for the presence of LA-MRSA at beginning and end of one fattening period per farm. Altogether, a significant (p < 0.05) decrease in colonization with LA-MRSA from beginning to end of the fattening periods in pigs and surfaces can be observed. Alternative farms showed a higher dynamic in the colonization. In organic farms, almost no colonization was found. Influencing housing condition factors that determine LA-MRSA status at the end of the fattening period are the number of pigs in the building, LA-MRSA status at the beginning of fattening period, material of the floor (straw bedding), strictness of black–white separation and antibiotic treatment during the fattening period. For pig farming in general, knowledge and measures to reduce the colonization with LA-MRSA would be important.

During the first days of a calf’s life, the foundations are laid for successful growth and thus also for the later performance of the cows. The aim of the present study was to analyze the impact on the weight gain of newborn calves due to important management factors related to colostrum supply, iron supply, feeding regime and microbial load at first feeding. In spring 2017, information of 123 Holstein calves were analyzed with regard to the colostrum supply and management factors on eight commercial dairy farms located in Germany. Additionally, blood samples of newborn calves were analyzed for total immunoglobulin G (IgG) and serum iron content. Furthermore, Brix analysis and analysis of contamination by E. coli were performed on first colostrum samples from teats or buckets. Average daily weight gain of calves at days 14 and 50 was calculated. The colostrum IgG was estimated by Brix refractometer. The volume of initial colostrum supply and the time between birth and colostrum intake significantly (p < 0.05) influenced the serum IgG concentration. The serum IgG concentration, the serum iron concentration and the feeding regimen (restrictive or not restrictive feeding) had a significant effect (p < 0.05) on daily weight gains. In conclusion, this study shows that, in addition to a sufficient supply of immunoglobulins, other aspects, such as an adequate colostrum, iron and milk supply, play an essential role in calf growth rates.

Alienation between farmers and citizens has increased amid complex developments of agriculture’s intensification, urbanization processes, demographic change, and specialization in food supply chains in developed countries. Traditional public relations instruments have failed to generate societal acceptance of today’s intensive agricultural practices. At the same time, the agricultural sector feels alienated from societal value changes. Other controversial contexts showed that open face-to-face encounters at eye level hold the potential to promote mutual understanding and acceptance. The study aims to analyze how speed-dating conversations between farmers and citizens, considering participants’ characteristics, impact different outcome variables. 24 farmers and 22 citizens specifically recruited for participation in the speed-dating were organized to have short conversations of 10–15 min in different farmer-citizen-constellations. Each conversation had a specific overall agricultural topic including animal welfare, agricultural technology, environmental protection, agricultural policy, and esteem for food. Four months after, different outcomes were measured in a follow-up survey. For 84 person-constellations complete dyadic data were available to be analyzed by hierarchical regression analyses. Participants were mostly satisfied with the dialogue format and gained new factual and personal information. Results indicate stronger impacts of socio-demographic characteristics and personality traits than characteristics of the conversations themselves. Constellations with male citizens, female farmers, more educated farmers, extroverted participants, emotionally stable farmers, and more open participants tended to have higher dyadic outcome variable values. The results call for a re-design of farmer-citizen dialogue formats to facilitate more direct interpersonal communication.

In countries with professional pig husbandry in stables, the prevalence of livestock-associated (LA) methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) on farms has remained high or has further increased in recent years. Simple measures to reduce LA-MRSA among pigs have not yet been successfully implemented. The aim of this pilot study is twofold: first, to examine how the LA-MRSA status of LA-MRSA positive fattening pigs at the date of housing changes over the fatting period on straw bedding and, second, whether this change could be influenced by the quality of cleaning and disinfection (C&D). For this purpose, 122 animals are individually tested for LA-MRSA carriage at five sequential time points comparing pigs housed on a farm using straw bedding plus C&D (n = 59) vs. straw bedding plus simple cleaning (n = 63). At the time of housing, all animals in both groups are LA-MRSA positive. This status changes to 0% in the group with simple cleaning until the end of fattening and 28% in the C&D group. LA-MRSA in environmental and air samples is also reduced over the fattening period. The results indicate that keeping pigs on straw might be one way to reduce LA-MRSA during the fattening period with simple cleaning appearing to be more beneficial than C&D. Further investigations are necessary to determine the influencing factors more precisely.

Online retailers are challenged to present their products in an appropriate way to attract customers’ attention. To test the impact of product presentation features on customers’ visual attention, webcam eye tracking might be an alternative to infrared eye tracking, especially in situations where face-to-face contact is difficult. The aim of this study was to examine whether webcam eye tracking is suitable for investigating the influence of certain exogenous factors on customers’ visual attention when visiting online clothing shops. For this purpose, screenshots of two websites of two well-known online clothing retailers were used as stimuli. Linear regression analyses were conducted to determine the influence of the spatial position and the presence of a human model on the percentage of participants visiting a product depiction. The results show that products presented by human models and located in the upper middle area of a website were visited by more participants. From this, we were able to derive recommendations for optimising product presentation in online clothing shops. Our results fit well with those of other studies on visual attention conducted with infrared eye tracking, suggesting that webcam eye tracking could be an alternative to infrared eye tracking, at least for similar research questions.

Decisions made by farmers have impacts beyond the farm boundary, because farmers are the first link in the food supply chain. For this reason, understanding their decision-making behaviour may be of interest to all stakeholders of food systems. Since there is considerable evidence that personality traits may affect decision-making behaviour, we investigated personality traits utilising the HEXACO model of personality in a sample of 244 German livestock farmers. Based on comparisons with data obtained from existing literature that investigated the HEXACO personality traits using community samples and with preliminary data from an own community sample, we found that the livestock farmers differed from the general population. The farmers had higher scores in Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness and were more emotionally stable. Results of a multinomial logistic regression model showed that personality traits influenced farmers’ decisions to participate in particular livestock certification schemes. While high Conscientiousness increased the probability of participating in conventional animal welfare schemes, high Openness to Experience facilitated participation in organic schemes. However, the results of a confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the German version of the short item scale used to measure the personality traits of the farmer sample should be partially modified. Even though the results should be understood rather as first indications and as a basis for further research, our findings extend the understanding of farmers’ personality and provide information on underlying factors of farmers’ decision-making related to participation in livestock certification schemes. They could help to better align support strategies, e.g. for more environmentally and animal-friendly production, with the personality of farmers.

As more animal welfare is required in livestock farming, several approaches have been developed to improve the well-being of farmed animals on a voluntary basis. Since farmers’ acceptance is important for the success of these approaches, their preferences should be considered when developing farm animal welfare programs. We used choice based conjoint analysis to investigate the preferences of 242 German livestock farmers (147 cattle farmers; 95 pig farmers) regarding the design of farm animal welfare programs. The conditional logit regression models show that the measures serving as basis for remuneration and the compensation level were of decisive importance for the farmers’ choices. The most preferred measure for assessing animal welfare, and thus as the basis for remuneration, was animal health. As expected, a higher compensation level led to greater acceptance of an animal welfare approach. The commitment period was only of subordinate importance with the longer commitment period being preferred. Our study outlines aspects of farm animal welfare programs that might encourage farmers to participate in these programs. Future programs could consider our findings by emphasising health parameters and by creating planning security through longer commitment periods and sufficiently high compensations for farmers’ efforts to improve animal welfare.

Decisions made by farmers can have large influences beyond the farm boundary because farmers are the first link in the food supply chain. For this reason, understanding their decision-making behaviour may be of interest to all stakeholders of food systems. Since there is considerable evidence that personality traits may affect decision-making behaviour, this paper investigates personality traits according to the HEXACO model of personality in a sample of 244 German livestock farmers. Our results indicate that livestock farmers differ in their personality from the general population, with farmers scoring higher on honesty-humility, conscientiousness and being more emotionally stable. Comparisons within the farmer sample show that organic livestock farmers score higher on Openness than conventional farmers. However, the results of a confirmatory factor analysis suggest that the German version of the short item scale used to measure the personality traits of the sample should be partially modified. Even though our results should therefore be understood rather as first indications and a basis for further research, they could help to better align support strategies, e.g. for more animal-friendly production, with the personality traits of farmers.

Providing adequate levels of farm animal welfare is a challenge in today’s societies. Economic research indicates that neither market valuation for credence attributes in opaque markets, nor transparency improved market valuation with labelling schemes, nor non-market valuation in hypothetical markets to consider non-use values, nor non-monetary valuation in an ethical context are suitable to capture the value dimensions of farm animal welfare adequately. Monetary and non-monetary valuation problems stem from the complex concept of farm animal welfare and ethical challenges in utilitarian and anthropocentric approaches. Animal centred valuation of farm animal welfare is suggested as one future venue of economic research conditioned on overcoming speciesism.

Aufgrund der zunehmenden Diskussion um den Tierschutz ist das Toten mannlicher Kuken der Legeherkunfte aus tierethischer, gesellschaftlicher wie politischer Sicht kaum mehr vertretbar. Im Rahmen eines Forschungsprojektes, finanziert durch das Ministerium fur Klimaschutz, Umwelt, Landwirtschaft, Natur- und Verbraucherschutz des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, untersuchte die Fachhochschule Sudwestfalen das Marktpotential von Fleisch- und Wurstwaren mannlicher Lege- und Zweinutzungshybride bei 10- und 20-wochiger Mast. Es wurde dabei der Frage nachgegangen, inwieweit und unter welchen Bedingungen nachhaltige Erzeugungs-, Verarbeitungs- und Vermarktungsprozesse fur den Geflugelsektor aufgebaut werden konnen, um auf das Toten der Hahnenkuken verzichten zu konnen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass fur eine wirtschaftlich erfolgreiche Mast der Lege- und Zweinutzungshybriden eine hochwertige Vermarktung unabdingbar ist. Interessante produktpolitische Vermarktungsperspektiven ergeben sich fur Dauerwurstwaren wie Salami. Die Mast der Zweinutzungshahne kann wirtschaftlich ohne Querfinanzierung uber die Eier erreicht werden, wenn das Fleisch und die Wurstwaren im Bio-Marktsegment positioniert werden. Insgesamt ergeben sich durch die Herstellung hochwertiger Fleisch- und Wurstprodukte aus Lege- und Zweinutzungshahnen und die Einbettung in neuartige Vermarktungsmodelle mit passenden Marktpositionierungen realistische Perspektiven.

Providing adequate levels of farm animal welfare is a challenge in today’s societies. Economic research shows that neither market valuation for credence attributes in opaque markets, nor transparency improved market valuation with labelling schemes, nor non-market valuation in hypothetical markets to take account of non-use values, nor non-monetary valuation in an ethical context will suffice to provide adequate levels of farm animal welfare. Monetary and non-monetary valuation problems stem from the complex concept of farm animal welfare and ethical challenges in utilitarian and anthropocentric approaches. Animal centred valuation of farm animal welfare is suggested as one future venue of economic research requiring to leave behind speciesism.

AbstractAquaponic systems are often designated as sustainable food production systems that are still facing various challenges, especially when they are considered as a commercial endeavour that needs to compete on the market. The early stages of the aquaponics industry have witnessed a number of unrealistic statements about the economic advantageousness of aquaponics. This chapter deals with these topics and discusses them critically. The latest scientific literature and current personal experiences of European commercial aquaponics farmers are taken into account on three levels: The horticulture side of production, the aquaculture side of production and the early data on the market response to aquaponics, emphasising the marketing issues and public acceptance of aquaponics. In summary, the chapter does not provide an “off-the-peg” solution to evaluate the economic performance of a particular aquaponics system. Instead it provides a broad database that enables an estimation of the efficiency of a planned system more realistically, pointing to challenges that the commercial aquaponics early adopters faced that are important lessons for future aquaponic endeavours, particularly in Europe.

Eine angemessene Zahlungsbereitschaft fur Fleischerzeugnisse von Legehybrid- oder Zweinutzungshahnen ist ein wichtiger Aspekt, um diese innovativen Konzepte der Legehennenhaltung wirtschaftlich tragfahig zu machen. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Auswirkung von Informations-Framing auf die Zahlungsbereitschaft fur Fleischprodukte dieser Hahne. Das multiple lineare Regressionsmodell zeigt, dass sich ein hedonistisches Framing signifikant positiv auf die Zahlungsbereitschaft der VerbraucherInnen auswirkt. Im Gegensatz dazu beeinflussen die Einstellungen der VerbraucherInnen zur Totung der Eintagskuken die Zahlungsbereitschaft nicht.