Status of the smallholder pig farming sector in Gauteng Province of South Africa.

Pig farming is an important area of pig production among smallholder farmers in Gauteng Province. The objectives of the study were to identify the demographics, farm infrastructure, type of feed, animal health, management and marketing channels within the smallholder pig sector in Gauteng Province. The population was divided into four strata, namely the four district municipalities. A simple random sampling within each strata was done to select the 71 smallholder pig farmers at West Rand, Sedibeng, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni district municipalities. Descriptive statistics was performed using SAS software. The results demonstrated that the majority of the pig farmers were males (67%) and were above 50 years of age (67%), while 56% of the smallholder pig farmers had high school education. Moreover, majority of the pig farmers privately own the farms (62%) and the farm infrastructure had facilities with low cost housing and modern facilities. Moreover, 47% of the farmers feed their pigs with feed swill. A large proportion of the farmers did not vaccinate their pigs (81%). Additionally, majority of farmers were found to not identify their pig herds (63%). Noteworthy, majority of the pig farmers did not have breeding boars (73%) and sold their pigs at auctions (70%). In general, there was lack of information about basic pig management and husbandry. _______________________________________________________________________________________