Old livestock breeds can benefit modern Danish natural landscapes and be used for niche production of ”culturally historic” meat.

To know which farm your boiled egg comes from, which fields have supplied nourishment for the wheat in your bread and from which tree your apple has hung is increasingly a consumer desire. There is demand for food with a good story behind it.

Consumer demand for food with a story and the need for animals to cultivate the landscape can be combined to promote the use of Denmark’s original livestock breeds. Two birds can be killed with one stone: the historic farm animals multiply, whereby survival of the breed is ensured, and the pastoral landscape is cared for. At the same time a saleable product in the shape of meat comes out of it.

Modern farm animals are efficient and productive. On the other hand, the old breeds are robust and hardy and get by fine on moors, salt marshes and scrub where modern, improved animals cannot thrive. Care of nature using livestock is an area in which the old, national breeds in many cases would manage better than modern breeds.

- Use of the animals in the landscape would also serve to advertise the cultural and historic values that the original breeds represent and increase public knowledge of the animals, says Yonatan Schvartzman, political science student at the University of Aarhus.

In collaboration with scientists from the Department of Genetics and Biotechnology at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at the same university, he has prepared a report that describes the problems associated with the care of the landscape using historic livestock breeds. The report also discusses the challenges involved in establishing a production of the historical breeds and how these challenges can be met. The report is a kind of idea catalogue for farmers, breeders, land owners and other relevant parties who want to proceed in that direction.

- Denmark is under international obligation to maintain the genetic resources. We can derive great benefit from active use of the old animal breeds both with regard to the pastoral landscape and the dinner plate. The animals should not just be museum pieces, says senior scientist Vivi Hunnicke Nielsen, Department of Genetics and Biotechnology.

For further information please contact: Senior scientist Vivi Hunnicke Nielsen, Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Aarhus, telephone: +45 8999 1361, e-mail: ViviH.Nielsen@agrsci.dk

Text and photo: Janne Hansen