Insights to optimise marketing decisions on pig-grower farms

Abstract

Modern pig production in a vertically integrated company is a highly specialised and industrialised activity, requiring increasingly complex and critical decision-making. The present paper focuses on the decisions made on the pig-grower farms operating on an all-in–all-out management policy at the last stage of pig production. Based on a mixed-integer linear-programming model, an assessment for specific parameters to support marketing decisions on farms without individual weight control is made. The analysis of several key factors affecting the optimal marketing policy, such as transportation cost, when and how many pigs to deliver to the abattoir and weight homogeneity of the batch, served to gain insight into marketing decisions. The results confirmed that not just the feeding program, but also the grading price system, transportation and batch homogeneity have an enormous impact on the optimal marketing policy of fattening farms in a vertically integrated company. In addition, within the range of conditions considered, a time window of 4 weeks was deemed as optimal for delivering animals to the abattoir and the subsequent revenue was 15% higher than with traditional marketing rules.