The swine production in Brazil has improved significantly throughout the years, with advances focused on nutrition, genetics, and health. However, investments in technology and environment control have been adopted less intensively when compared with other livestock areas. Among the increasing investments in this segment, improvements in climate control and automation are observed, such as digital management technologies in the swine production system (Machado and Nantes, 2011).

Farm automation (such as feeding and environment control) and data management (known as Big Data) are likely to become even more frequent on swine farms (Hoste et al., 2017). Although Brazil is not a leading country in investments in this segment, the adoption of such technologies has been more intense in breeding systems and gradually on wean-to-finish (WTF) farms. Notably, the major limiting factors regarding a wider adoption of such technologies is the initial investment, material quality, and coverage of internet signal on the farms (Beker et al., 2020).

The understanding of the socioeconomic profile and the characterization of the reality for decision making of the implementation of new technologies is still sparse in the Brazilian swine industry. With the consolidation of the Agro 4.0 era (Massruhá and Leite, 2017) the knowledge of the profile of the farmers becomes an important way to understand the technological and economic issues for the farmers.

In this context, two questions were proposed to enhance the discussion on this subject: Is there a difference between the socioeconomic profile of pig producers on the different types of farms (nursery, WTF, and finishing)? How is the profile of investment and adoption of environmental control technologies by swine farmers of different types of farms? Therefore, the objective of this study was to characterize the socioeconomic profile as well as the capacity and disposition for investment of the farmers associated to a swine integration system in the South of Brazil, focusing on implementation of environment control automation on pig farms.

This study was carried out according to the institutional Ethics Committee for Human Studies (reference number 4.085.137/2020). To characterize the swine production units, qualitative and quantitative data collection was performed through a digital survey (Google Forms, Google LLC, 2020). Our methodology was similar to that of Marcílio et al. (2022).

The structured questionnaire was composed of 34 questions, including open, dichotomic, or multiple-choice questions (with absolute and relative frequency answers). The classification of the farms (nursery, WTF, and finishing) followed the parameters indicated by the Associação Brasileira dos Criadores de Suínos (ABCS, 2016). The questions addressed aspects such as the type of farm, physical and economical characterization of the farm, employee profiles, perspective into the adoption of automation technologies, as well as the overall profile into decision making, regarding monitoring and investment in environment control on pig farms. A previous consent form was signed by participants.

The access link to the survey form was sent to all the participants (n = 281), from nursery, WTF, and finishing, integrated to a swine production agroindustry in the Itajaí Valley, Santa Catarina, Brazil (27°14'26.77" S and 49°41'07.18" W). All farms included in this study belonged to the same integration system (in accordance to the Federal Law 13.288 of May 16th, 2016) comprising a group of 23 municipalities. The reply period lasted from September to October 2020.

A total of 190 replies were received, representing 67.6% of the total of farms pertaining to the integration system. The nursery, finishing, and WTF units corresponded to 2.1% (n = 4), 61.1% (n = 116), and 36.8% (n = 70) of the replies, respectively. The average income history (R$/pig delivered) was considered on a 24-month basis, which preceded the survey. Based on that, the different farm types were initially grouped and then divided into four distinct income groups (high, average, regular, and low), each with 25% of the participants. The four new groups were used to arrange the answers regarding innovation and investment in environment control.

The daily labor time was calculated by the sum of number of workers and hours of work per day, and the result was converted in time (min) as a common ground for every 100 animals (Miele et al., 2011; Heinemann, 2013). Data were evaluated through descriptive statistics, which produced absolute and relative frequencies through the software Excel (Microsoft®) and Minitab 18®.

The socioeconomic and investment profiles are the main characteristics to respond the interaction between factors such as region, culture, and economic relevance of the most important activity of the area of the study. This study aimed to understand the profile of the pig farmers in the Itajaí Valley, a countryside of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The studied region has a high human development index (HDI).

The average profile of the pig farmer is of middle-aged men (44.5 years old), with a primary education degree although a study carried out by Hoelscher (2018) indicated that the pig farmers from the South of Brazil have a higher educational level, with at least a secondary education degree or a bachelor's degree. However, the author interviewed farmers that were in the activity for a longer time when compared with the present study. Additionally, another study observed that farmers within a similar age range had a heterogeneous educational level when compared with pig farmers with family and industrial activities (Kumar et al., 2014). Lastly, a similar pattern was also observed in Central Africa (Motsa'a et al., 2018).

The average housing capacity of the nursery, WTF, and finishing units in the State of Santa Catarina are 1,921, 1,660, and 649, respectively (ABCS, 2016), lower than the capacities observed in the present study. Similarly, the overall housing capacity on nursery and finishing farms in Brazil are also lower than those obtained in this study. However, the WTF farms have an average housing capacity of 2,651 animals/farm (ABCS, 2016), higher than observed in the present study. Lastly, the housing capacity of pig farms in Paraná, Brazil, another southern state, are smaller (669±340 animals) compared with the present study.

The demand for employees in WTF and finishing were quite similar, although there are important differences regarding the type of activities required for each production system. Furthermore, there is a good perception regarding the quality of farm employees, although the reduced possibilities of hiring may become a limiting factor in the future, especially on the farms that do not have a perspective of family inheritance, which in this study was of around 25%. This scenario indicates a good perspective regarding the maintenance of the activities on the farm. Moreover, profitability is the most important factor related to the permanence in the farm activity (Kruger et al., 2018). Moreover, the guarantee of a satisfactory income is fundamental for new generations to remain in the production industry in the countryside.

The number of workers involved in pig farming was similar to the described in a previous study (Horwat, 2019), which investigated the metropolitan region of Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, which employed 2.2±1.2 workers on average. The author also reported a great participation of family workforce in pig farming as well as other economical enterprises within the farm such as crop, cattle, and poultry production. The great importance of the family workforce was also reported by Silva et al. (2017) who observed about 75% of the workforce of this type in productive swine farms in the southern region of Brazil.

The energy supply and internet signal are satisfactory. However, there are constant interruptions due to the recurrent power blackouts, roughly, in one third of the farms. A small fraction of the properties relies on alternative power sources. Moreover, the quality of the energy production must be in consonance with legal regulations with respect to animal welfare applied to pig farms (MAPA, 2020), which demands supplementary power sources on farms with automated systems, and therefore requires a contingency plan to guarantee the welfare and health of the animals during power blackouts or interruptions.

The internet signal reaches about 85% of the properties, and the access is mostly performed via smartphones, which were present on all farms. A study carried out by SEBRAE (2017) indicated that 92.6% of the rural farmers from Santa Catarina State (Brazil) used smartphones in their properties. However, when asked about the quality of internet coverage in the countryside, the farmers ranked it as 6.2 (in a 0-10 range). Therefore, the internet signal quality can be a limiting factor when farmers adopt an online automation/control system that requires a livestream data exchange.

Farms with better income history per pig delivered for slaughter, regardless of the housing capacity of the property, declared they work for longer periods. Furthermore, data from the InterPig Network, which contains information of the most well ranked countries in pig farming, indicates that the required time spent per animal by an employee in the finishing systems in Santa Catarina is 49 min, whereas the world average is 22 min (Miele, 2019). In our study, the average work time per animal was 43 min for the finishing farms, considering a total of 116 days of housing. Besides, this value can be explained by the low demand of human labor in automated systems, which is most common in countries such as United States, Denmark, and France, that are part of the InterPig Network (Miele et al., 2011; Heinemann, 2013).

One third of the properties did not perform any control of the environment indicators within the farm. In addition, two thirds of the farmers that monitor these indicators did not have records of the temperature and relative humidity. It is important to indicate that the automation strategies are sparse in the reality observed in this study. Additionally, the manual handling of curtains is an important management tool for pig production systems with positive/natural pressure (Santos et al., 2018; Beker et al., 2020). In this study, the handwork is more predominant when compared with automated systems. Therefore, the average number of times that workers had to manually open or close the curtains may also be related to animal performance.

A conservative investment profile, with respect to automation technology and environment control, was predominant among the farmers, even after indicating that they consider the pig farming as a profitable activity. The perception of profit in WTF and finishing farms based on the data of this study is different from the observed in another study (Piva and Gonçalves, 2014), which indicated that the WTF systems in Brazil require more investments in infrastructure and manpower training and, therefore, have the lowest profitability on a short or average term. A study of Consoni et al. (2015) indicated that the WTF system have a good economic viability in the Brazilian perspective, mostly due to the increase in average daily weight gain and average weight at slaughter, in comparison with pigs raised in the traditional growing and finishing systems.

Farmers with a lower income history are less conservative regarding their investments in environment control. The assumption is that the decision making into improving is likely to increase the animal performance. Lastly, the high cost and interest rate over financing as well as the lack of knowledge regarding up-to-date technologies and availability of material of good quality were the main limiting factors that may explain the low investment rates in strategies for automation and environment control on the farms studied.

The socioeconomic profile of the swine farmers participating in our study was homogeneous, probably because all swine farmers were part of the same integration system. Several factors were identified as key points for investments towards technologies for control and automation of climate on swine farms. The perception of the farmers is that the types of swine farms included in the study have good profitability, considering a productive scenario by the expressive family production system with diversification in the activities on the farm and positive expectation towards family inheritance of the farm. Besides, the performance of the animals may have a positive association with the number of daily hours of work. The adoption in higher scale of automation of environment control by the farmers is strictly related to the reduction of the initial investment, interest over loans, and diffusion of knowledge regarding the available state-of-the-art technologies as well as availability of good-quality materials for performing such improvements.