How smart should resilience be? On the need of a transdisciplinary approach to transform pig production systems

Pig production is related to many societal challenges. This raises the question whether and how pig production systems can be transformed in a way that better includes animal welfare and is responsive to (other) societal concerns. In a project funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), we focus on the role of resilience to explore the possibilities of defining novel production systems that better match with the interests and adaptive capacities of animals. However, to play this central role, the concept of resilience needs an integrated and transdisciplinary approach. Using the ‘SmartResilience’ project as an example, we argue that to address societal challenges in livestock production it is not sufficient to view one topic through the lenses of multiple disciplines and to produce research results from each discipline which are only supplementary to one another. We argue why complex societal challenges like transforming livestock systems can only be tackled by real collaboration between different disciplines, and why this collaboration already needs to start in the design-phase of innovations. We discuss three stages of collaboration that will lead to a deepened integration of disciplines, which will ultimately result in positive societal impact: (1) identifying the underlying concepts that play a role for achieving the project aim (e.g. animal welfare, resilience); (2) making the implicit assumptions of these concepts explicit by integrating knowledge and methods from different disciplines (e.g. philosophy and animal science); and (3) translating and incorporating the explicit assumptions of concepts into practice and into further actions within the project (e.g. pig breeding or housing strategies). By doing this, we expect to prepare a route forward for more welfare-friendly and sustainable pig production that is in dialogue with society.