A Structural Approach to Some Contradictions in Worldwide Swine Production and Health Research

Abstract

Several biosafety gaps in agri-food sectors have become evident in recent years. Many of them are related to the global livestock systems and the organizational models involved in their management and organization. For example, producing pigs requires a global system of massive confinement and specific technological innovations related to animal production and health that involve broad technical and scientific structures, which are required to generate specific knowledge for successful management. This suggests the need for an underlying socially agglomerated technological ecosystem relevant for these issues. So, we propose the analysis of a specialized scientific social structure in terms of the knowledge and technologies required for pig production and health. The objective of this work is to characterize structural patterns in the research of the swine health sector worldwide. We use a mixed methodological approach, based on a social network approach, and obtained scientific information from 4868 specialized research works on health and pig production generated between 2010 to 2018, from 47 countries. It was possible to analyze swine research dynamics, such as convergence and influence, at country and regional levels, and identify differentiated behaviors and high centralization in scientific communities that have a worldwide impact in terms of achievements but also result in significant omissions.