Such as pigs eat: the rise and fall of the pannage pig in the UK

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PerspectiveReceived: 24 September 2012 Revised: 18 February 2013 Accepted article published: 1 April 2013 Published online in Wiley Online Library: 22 April 2013

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI 10.1002/jsfa.6145

Such as pigs eat: the rise and fall of thepannage pig in the UKAlexandra L Wealleans∗

Abstract

Mast-feeding systems once formed the mainstay of pork production across Europe, but have now largely been forgotten. Oneof the earliest farming practices, it allowed people to fatten pigs on an otherwise wasted resource. Mast feeding was vitalin the ancient world: Rome, Saxon England and the Normans all relied heavily on woodland pigs. As time and technologyadvanced, mast systems became outmoded and fell into disuse. However, recent public interest in improved animal welfareand sustainable agriculture, combined with anecdotal reports of improved flavour, has once again brought mast feeding intothe spotlight. This article chronicles the changes in popularity and perception of mast-feeding systems throughout history, anduses the historical perspective to outline a possible future for woodland pigs.c© 2013 Society of Chemical Industry

Keywords: pigs; pannage; meat quality; mast feeding

INTRODUCTIONThe system of turning fattening pigs out into woodland inthe autumn is virtually as old as farming itself. Pigs were firstdomesticated roughly 9000 years ago and have been present inBritain since the earliest Neolithic, about 4000 BC.1,2 Mast feeding(the practice of raising pigs on the fruit of forest trees like acornsand beech nuts) was economically essential in parts of Europeduring the Middle Ages,3 enabling farmers to fatten their animalson common land, whilst serving a wider ecosystem purpose; pigsturned out into woodland would eat acorns, which are poisonousto other livestock species, such as cattle and horses.

Until the enclosures of the 16th and 17th centuries, rearingsystems remained mostly free ranging, reducing the need forfarmers to give supplemental feed.4 However, urbanisation andindustrialisation meant that traditional low-input systems simplycould not provide enough food for a burgeoning population. Thisled, first in the 1870s and then again in the 1940s and 1950s, tothe intensification of agriculture.

The modern pig industry is facing a crisis – production costsare up, and pork prices are down. This problem is reinforced by ashift in public and scientific opinion away from intensive farmingmethods, and towards sustainable, welfare-friendly systems, withinterest growing in alternative feeding systems. If the UK andIrish pig industries are to continue to lead the way in terms ofwelfare and sustainability, new systems of production must beinvestigated. New solutions to old problems have to be found.

The pannage system has faded from public view, and books onagricultural history are largely silent on the subject. But this hasnot always been the case. The rise and fall of the pannage pighas been chronicled across the years by writers, artists, scientistsand legislators. If we, as modern agriculturalists and consumers,are keen to provide a future for mast-feeding systems, we mustfirst understand their history because, as the philosopher GeorgeSantayana almost said, an industry without a memory is an industryof madmen. So, with a view to their future, let us examine theirpast.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE PANNAGE PIG?One of the earliest mentions of mast feeding is in Homer’s Odyssey.The goddess Circe turns Odysseus’ men into pigs, and while theyare penned, she feeds them on acorns: ‘Circe threw them someacorns and beech masts, such as pigs eat’.5 The reference here istransitory, made almost in passing, suggesting that mast feedingwas at that time an everyday occurrence and did not need to beexplained in detail. The normality of mast feeding is confirmed bya number of Greco-Roman authors: Strabo, a Greek historian andphilosopher, records that in his time the woods of Cisalpine Gaul‘have acorns in such quantities that Rome is fed mainly on theherds of swine that come from there’.6 Again, the emphasis hereis placed on the abundance of feedstuff, not on an explanation ofthe system itself.

Although the Roman agriculturalist Cato makes explicitprovision for a swineherd in the layouts of his model plantations,he makes no suggestion as to where or how the pigs are fed.As Cato set out to write a practical handbook with ‘no eye toexperiment, no reference to new ideas or processes’, the lack ofinformation about feeding systems strongly suggests that therewas one universally adopted pig husbandry system in place atthat time. Scholars have assumed, due to the frequent mentionsto oak trees and woodland, that Cato intended the pigs to be runin nearby woodland.7

In the British Isles, the practice of turning pigs out into oakwoodland to fatten dates to at least Celtic times, at which pointpigs were taken to the forest in the last days of August andremained there until the fifteenth of January.3 The system was

∗ Correspondence to: Alexandra Wealleans, School of Agriculture, Policy andDevelopment, University of Reading, Earley Gate, PO Box 237, Reading, BerkshireRG6 6AR, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Berkshire,RG6 6AR, UK

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The rise and fall of the pannage pig in the UK www.soci.org

known by the Anglo-Saxons as ‘denbera’, helping to form someof our most recognisable landscapes, including that of the Wealdof Kent, New Forest, and Sussex. Villages near the Weald usedits woodland, in addition to other common land, to depasturepigs. The small parcels of woodland used by individual villageswere called dens, and were connected to their parent villagesby droveways: ‘Along the droveways were driven the swine forwhose pasture the dens were originally occupied, the oaks andbeech of the weald affording excellent mast’.8 Over time, these pigpastures became permanently inhabited, and their existence canbe traced today in Kentish place names: Benenden, Chattendenand Newenden, among many others.

The system largely survived the Norman Conquest, but the oldAnglo-Saxon terminology was left by the wayside: the invadingNormans called the practice of mast feeding, and its associated fees‘pannage’. The word is believed to derive from a Middle-Latin wordpannagium, feeding swine on fallen acorns, and its derivative theold French word pasnage, meaning payment to a landlord for theright of feeding swine.3 As may be expected from the word’s roots,pannage has always referred to the levies imposed on commonersusing the system, unlike denbera, which referred to the feedingsystem itself.

Many Medieval manuscripts have illustrations of pannage pigsand their swineherds. The Luttrell Psalter (c1320–1345),9 shown inFig. 1, depicts pigs eating the acorns their swineherd has knockeddown from the tree for them. Similar pictures of swineherdsharvesting acorns, either by climbing the trees, or by knocking theacorns down for the pigs, are also depicted in the St Albans Psalter(c1140), amongst many others.10,11 However, the archaeologicalrecord shows that husbandry techniques in the 14th century werebeginning to slowly change. Bones from one site in Flanderssuggest that although pigs remained free-ranging, they were alsoreceiving supplementary feed; evidence from another site lookedat by the same study found conclusive evidence that the pigswere kept exclusively in sties and stalls.12 The variation betweensites suggests that husbandry practices were greatly affectedby the surrounding environment; in areas where the populationhad more rapidly increased, and more forest had been lost, pigproduction had moved indoors and become more industrialised,whilst the traditional systems remained in place in areas that werestill relatively well afforested.

Mast feeding systems are regularly mentioned in earlyagricultural guides. In Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie,Thomas Tusser mentions pannage several times in his advice onfarming practices in the autumn months, especially in Novemberwhere he instructs swineherds to retrieve mast for their pigs,as depicted in the Saxon stories and medieval manuscripts.13

By contrast to Tusser, who emphasises the importance of mastfeeding, a French text, Maison Rustique, gives the first indication indocumentary sources of deliberate restriction of pigs to a sty:

The Hogges which you intend to keepe in and to fat shallnot come fort of their stie, being alone and free from others,neither shall they have any light but at the doore which ismade to go in at for to dresse them.14

The system of mast feeding, and associated payments, isexplained very carefully in Manwood’s 1665 treatise on Forestlaw:

[agisters] do also attend to the agist of the demesne woodsand hedgerows of the King for the profit of the mast which

Figure 1. A swineherd knocks acorns down to his waiting pigs (from theLuttrell Psalter, c1320–1345).

is called pannage. For the feeding of hogs or swine withthe mast of the woods is called the agisting of the woods,but the profit of the mast is called the pannage. Pannage israther the money that is received for the agistment of themast, than the mast or agistment itself.15

By contrast, the Spanish novel Guzman de Alfarache still refers tothe mast feeding of pigs in an off-hand, everyday manner. Themain character is at an inn, where the landlady serves him anomelette which he wolfs down ‘like a pig rooting for acorns’:16

the same pigs are also mentioned in Cervantes’ story of DonQuixote.17 The readers of Guzman and Don Quixote would havebeen familiar with the practice of mast feeding as these pigs arepart of the cultural history of the region; the Iberian peninsula insouth-western Spain and Portugal is home to the Dehesa, todaythe largest surviving mast-feeding system in the world.

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www.soci.org AL Wealleans

By the 1760s, the technological changes and advances thatconstitute the agricultural revolution were well under way. Thepopulation explosion, driven by a dramatic fall in death rates,meant that traditional methods could no longer support anincreasingly urban population. By the end of the 18th century,Britain had almost entirely moved on from mast-feeding systemsfor the production of pork. In William Gilpin’s Forest Scenery, thereis a description of the mast season in the New Forest:

and as evening draws on, the swineherd gives them anotherplentiful repast under the neighbouring trees, which rainacorns upon them for an hour together, at the sound of hishorn. . . . Now and then, in calm weather when mast fallssparingly, he calls them perhaps together by the music ofhis horn to a gratuitous meal’.18

Unlike previous descriptions, Gilpin explains the pannage systemto his reader in some depth, suggesting either that the system isfalling into disuse, or that there is a wider disconnection betweenthe public and agricultural practices.

The practice of forest enclosures, started in the 16th century,swept across Europe with increasing speed during the early 1800s.In about 1810 the woodland grazing of all livestock other thanpigs was banned throughout Denmark, reducing the efficiency andimportance of the traditional open-field system.19 In the UnitedKingdom, an Act of Enclosure for the New Forest was passed in1808, but little permanent change occurred until 1851 and thepassing of the Deer Removal Act.

By the middle of the 19th century, attitudes to the pannage pighad shifted once again as the Victorians seemed to feel an especialnostalgia for the agricultural practices of the past. John Clare, aparticularly sentimental poet, uses the aesthetic of the pannagepig to encapsulate the feeling and romance of a traditional, ruralautumn:

The feather from the raven’s breastFalls on the stubble lea,The acorns near the old crow’s nestDrop pattering down the treeThe grunting pigs, that wait for all,Scramble and hurry where they fall.20

A newspaper article in the Hampshire Chronicle followed an oldNew Forest commoner, and related his unusual and quaint ‘autumnoccupation’: this is described in great detail, and with an equalamount of romance.21 One article, which covers in some detaildescriptions of the animals of the New Forest, has this to say aboutthe pannage season:

This business is not now carried on to the same extent thatit was formerly, but it remains on the same principle, andtherefore some notice of it cannot fail in being interestingto those who are not acquainted with the customs of thispeculiar district’.22

By 1880 pannage was included in a dictionary of ‘old’ countryand farming terms, and was defined as ‘the feeding of swine orother cattle on the mast or other herbage, in forests, woods, etc’.23

The distinction between the system and its associated levies thatwas made clear by Manwood in 1665 has entirely disappeared,indicating that pannage had been firmly relegated to the realmsof past practice.

PROFITABILITYAs might perhaps be expected, many of the historical texts dealwith the profitability and social importance of mast feeding. To startwith, the character of the swineherd in the Odyssey provides someevidence as to the systems’ profitability: although the swineherd ishimself a slave of Odysseus, he has purchased with his own goods,whilst his master was away, an under-slave of his own.24

Denbera is regularly mentioned in Saxon literature, whichdelighted in chronicling and romanticising daily life. For example,the bard Aelfric recounts how Hadwald the herdsman, in thefaithful discharge of his duty, climbed an oak and fed his livestockwith the leafy top, and fell hard and died, with glory to God forthe fidelity of his care as herdsman.25 Pannage was worth dyingfor, and also important enough to remember after death: Anglo-Saxon wills regularly include bequests of swine and provision formast feeding. In a grant of land to a noble, King Ethelberht ofKent specifically switches language from the formal, legal Latinof the grant to the native language, in order to clarify the useof certain pastures: ‘pascua porcorum quot nostra lingua denberanominamus’, or ‘These are the swine-pastures which we call inour language denbera’.26 Trow-Smith and Clutton-Brock state thatpigs were so important in pre-Conquest society as to represent ‘thehallmark of Saxon pastoral husbandry’ and ‘the basic componentof the agricultural economy’.27,28 This economic contribution camenot only from the meat, but also the valuable by-products tallowand lard. However, the depasturing of pigs in woods renderedtheir manure unusable as a fertiliser, later considered an importantpart of their value.

Oaks will produce mast irregularly; roughly one year in seven atree will produce a large crop of acorns, and this is known as a mastyear. However, oak is a more consistent producer than the beech,whose fruit will only ripen in warm summers, producing usablemast about one year in three. The inconstancy of the pigs’ feedsupply was a serious matter: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that1116 was a hard year, partially due to the lack of mast. ‘This was avery vexatious and destructive year with respect to the fruits of theearth. . . . This year also was so deficient in mast, that there wasnever heard such in all this land or in Wales’.29 Tusser, in his advicefor November, wrote ‘get pole, boy mine, beate hawes to swine’.13

This active usage of mast species other than the more commonoak and beech is most likely an attempt to protect stock-keepersagainst years with a catastrophic lack of acorns and beech nuts, ashad happened 400 years previously.

There can be little doubt that woodland was an extremelyvaluable commodity in pre-Conquest society. By the 7th century,when a large proportion of pigs were bred in enclosed homesteadsand then turned out into the vast common forests, the laws ofIne commanded that ‘If anyone destroys a wood by fire; and itbecomes known who did it, he shall pay a full fine. He shall pay 60shillings, because fire is a thief’.30 King Alfred fixed a uniform rentfor the royal denbera. It was a sliding scale based on the pig’s size,and therefore their worth. Of pigs that, at the end of the season,were three fingers thick in fat, he was to have one third; of pigsthat were two fingers thick in fat, he charged one fourth, and ofthose a thumb thick, one fifth.31 The right of the King to charge forthese pannage-pigs was regarded as a sort of ground rent.

Although there was continued use of the system, by the 12th and13th centuries the importance of the pig to richer households wasin decline as they were seen as poor men’s food (for whom the factthat pork salts and keeps well, unlike beef and mutton, meant a pigcould make a large contribution to a family’s economy).32 Despitetheir distaste for pork, the system of pannage charges (a heavy

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and unpopular burden on commoners) was one of the major wayslandlords gained income from their woodland. In 1255 the Vaticanunder Pope Nicholas IV ordered a new survey of the holdings ofthe Church and pannage was included in the list of valuables: no‘lands, meadows, pastures, pannage, gold, silver, . . . or any otherecclesiastical dues whatsoever’ should escape assessment.33 In the13th and 14th centuries, orders of monk–soldiers were regularlyrewarded by the Church for noble and courageous deeds withvaluable gifts of woodland pasture, and the right to graze pigsupon it.34

Large herds of woodland pigs were still recorded: pannage wasregularly levied on between 200 and 250 pigs in the manor ofAlrewas in the 1330s.35 In some cases great lengths were taken inorder to obtain mast feeding: pigs from Cuxham in Oxfordshire(where no woodland survived by the early 14th century) weredriven 40 miles to pannage.36 These pannage payments wereoften collected regardless of the amount of mast available forthe pigs.

Not only the landlords became rich from pannage – just as inthe Odyssey, the swineherds themselves are reported to have beenprosperous. In the early 13th century, a swineherd is supposedto have contributed a peck of silver pennies to the funds forthe construction of Lincoln Minster. His effigy, known as theSwineherd of Stow, was incorporated into the cathedral’s design,and occupies one of the highest positions, equal to that of thebishop who oversaw the cathedral’s construction.37

By the time of the Domesday Book in the 11th century, woodlandrepresented an important element in the rural economy. The valueof woods was recorded in one of two ways: either linearly – ‘thereis wood x leagues in length and y in breadth’ – or in terms ofswine.38 This, again, was recorded in two ways. The first way wasfor the entry to give the number of pigs the wood was capableof supporting. More frequently, however, the entry ran ‘there iswood worth x swine from the pannage’; for example, the woodsof Sonning near Reading were worth 300 pigs, whilst the woodsbelonging to the monks of Sherborne were worth only 23.39 Takenat face value, this might suggest that in the 11th century littleelse mattered save for mast feeding and its associated payments.However, it is believed that pannage payments were used sowidely as a measure of space as they were simple, definable andeasily repeatable.40

Common rights, including pannage, began to come underthreat during the 13th and 14th centuries. Population growth inthe towns led to the spreading of arable land into more marginalareas, often cutting into woodland stands. In turn, the amountof income many landlords received from pannage was declining.In 12 years the pannage income of the royal forest of Glencreein Ireland fell from 5s. 4d. to 2s. 4d.41 These declines are perhapstestaments to the thinning of forests, especially of oak for timber.Some landlords were able to buck this trend through careful estatemanagement and increasing exploitation of their tenants: on landbelonging to Isabella de Forz on the Isle of Wight, the income fromthe sale of pasture and pannage rents increased from 4s. 9d. in1270 to £12 3s. in 1281.42

Documents from the mid-18th century point to landowners’changing expectations for forests and woodland. Hunting andcommoning were becoming less profitable, whilst the importanceof timber production was increasing rapidly. Similarly, in Spainthe Ordinances of Badajoz explicitly banned pigs from enclosedDehesas, preserving the land for the more valuable crops of timberand oxen.43

Findings of a Forest jury from 1746 state that browsing animalson oak or beech was a contravention of the 1698 Act, and thatpicking up acorns was ‘a grave offence and hurt to the timber’.44

In following years, frustrated forest officers wrote repeatedly tothe Lord Warden of the Forest, the Earl of Bedford, to complainabout the large number of pigs, many unringed, loose in theForest. Traditional Forest law was, by that time, in such disusethat although the pigs were technically forfeit, nobody knew whothey were forfeit to, or how to proceed with the forfeiture. It is oflittle surprise that pigs were considered the ‘most offensive of allcattle’.45,46

The Enclosures, intended to increase the value of the Forestfor the Crown and other wealthy landowners had the effect ofdrastically reducing the value of pasturage and pannage for thecommoners. Enclosure was still causing turbulence and civil unrestwell into the 19th century; newspaper reports from 1831 detailthe destruction of new enclosures by commoners in the Forest ofDean.47 The traditional ways of the New Forest were really onlysaved by an 1871 resolution of the House of Commons that said,pending legislation, no further enclosure should be permitted, andfelling of timber was completely proscribed, except for the thinningof young plantations. That these measures should be allowed tocontinue to damage the potential for pannage is a indicator ofhow the economic importance of pannage had declined throughthe centuries.

Vancouver48 calculated the profitability of finishing New Forestpigs on acorns, as well as providing supplementary feed: ’96 lb ofbacon may be obtained from the consumption of nine bushels,450 lbs, of barley, equalling 4 3/4 lbs of barley for one pound ofbacon . . . the account will stand thus:

96 lb of bacon at 6d. per pound £2809 bushels of barley at 4s. 6d. perbushel £206Leaving a profit on nine bushels of barley

thus expended, of£076

These accounts are the forerunners of modern agricultural eco-nomics, and detail the beginnings of the true commercialisationof farming. During the period 1865–1869 the numbers of pigsturned out onto the New Forest are as follows: 1865, 1575; 1866,5893; 1867, 3475, 1868, 5139; and 1869, 3721.49

Nor was the traditional system considered profitable: Briscoe-Eyre reported that a pig:

bought, fatted, and sold at about four-score weight mayproduce in six or eight weeks a profit of 1s. per week upto 10s., and with high feeding may produce a little more;but the value of the pig has lain, until lately, rather in thefact that it helps to turn everything to use and provides avaluable manure’.50

MEAT QUALITYThe foremost claim of pannage systems has always been theimprovements in meat quality and flavour. In a later Roman text,Varro states that swine feed ‘chiefly on mast, and next on beans,barley, and other grains’, and that this feeding system led to fat,pleasantly flavoured pork.51

Fuller considered pork from the New Forest superior to thatfrom the rest of country. ‘Hampshire hogs are allowed by allfor the best bacon, being our English Westphalian, and which,well ordered, have deceived the most judicious palates’; this was


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directly attributed to the diet the pigs ate: ‘Here the swine feed inthe Forest on plenty of acorns . . . which, going out lean, returnhome fat. . . . Nothing but fullness stints their feeding on the mastfalling from the trees . . . which some assign the fineness of theirflesh’.52

Just 20 years after Tusser’s active advocacy of mast feeding,agricultural writers were beginning to actively discourage the useof traditional, free-range systems: in 1861, Worlidge wrote that ‘If[pigs] are suffered to run abroad, they waste their Flesh much;and therefore it is esteemed the most Frugal and Beneficial wayto keep them always Penned into some Court, both for their Fleshand soil’.53 This statement that free-ranging pig husbandry willcause pigs to ‘waste their flesh’ seems a direct contradiction ofFuller’s point from that free-ranging mast feeding is ‘the reasonfor their fineness of flesh’.52 However, what Worlidge is probablyreferring to is the reduction in growth rates seen in outdoor pigscompared to those kept inside.

As the system slowly died out in Kent and other previousstrongholds, the pannage pig had become such an iconic symbolof the New Forest, and of the county, that the ‘Hampshire Hog’ hadcome to mean a person from Hampshire: Francis Grose definedthe Hampshire hog as a ‘jocular appellation for a Hampshireman; Hampshire being famous for a fine breed of hogs, and theexcellency of the bacon made there’.54 This excellency of flavourcontinued to be linked to mast-feeding systems:

a great number [of pigs are] fed for a few weeks in theclose of the autumn, upon the mast which the trees of theforest and other woodlands produce, in the county, andthe excellent mode of curing hog-meat practiced by thehouse-keepers, have contributed in a far greater degreeto establish that superiority ascribed to Hampshire bacon,than any inherent excellence in its native breed of hogs’.50

Proving the historical claims of improved flavour has been thefocus of many scientists in recent years, with work focussingespecially on the Spanish jamon iberico system. The effect of mast-based diets on pork and ham quality is a highly researched field,and a full discussion of the literature is beyond the scope of thisreview. For detailed information on the effect of acorn based diets,readers are directed to the reviews by Bonneau and Lebret55 andDaza et al.56

Numerous studies have shown improvements in aroma andflavour intensity, cured flavour and lower incidences of rancidityin pigs fed on acorns than in their conventionally reared

counterparts.57–60 The improvements in aroma have beenattributed to an increase in aldehydes in the meat.

Another important meat quality indicator is the proportion ofsaturated and unsaturated fatty acids in the meat. Cava et al.found that Iberian cross pigs fed on a solely acorn diet hadenhanced levels of monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) in thetotal lipids, triglyceride and phospholipid fractions of the Massetermuscle than pigs fed on either a concentrate diet, or a diet thatmixed concentrate and acorns.61 There was also an accompanyingsignificant decrease in total saturated fatty acids in the acornfed pigs. Acorn fed and mixed fed pigs showed higher levels ofpolyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), in intramuscular lipids andtriglycerides, than did pigs from the concentrate fed group. This isconfirmed by Muriel et al., who found that acorn feeding increasedlevels of total n-3 PUFA in the neutral and polar lipids of pork, andof individual n-3 PUFA, including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) anddocosohexaenoic acid (DHA).62

Studies on the Black Slavonian pig from Croatia have shownsimilar effects of acorns on meat quality. Acorn consumptionduring the last 3 weeks of the fattening period significantlyincreased the content of alpha linolenic acid (C18:3 n-3) in theLongisimus muscle.63 This in turn significantly reduced the n-6/n-3ratio in the muscle of acorn fed pigs. Salajpal et al. measured theimpact of acorn feeding on the blood lipid profile. It was foundthat a 3-week acorn feeding period significantly reduced totalcholesterol and triglyceride concentrations.64

Mast-based diets affect also affect the physical quality of pork:Pugliese et al. found that the meat from acorn fed Cinta Senesepigs had a lower moisture content, showed less drip loss andcooking loss in the oven than indoor reared pigs and the highestpercentage of protein and fat.65 Zumbo and Di Rosa found thatmeat from the Longisimus lumborum of acorn-fed Nero Sicilianopigs had significantly lower pH values and higher weight lossduring cooking.66 Another study on the Cinta Senese pigs foundthat overall losses during the curing process were lower in hamsfrom outdoor pigs than in hams from conventionally reared pigs,but that trimming and salting losses were greater.67

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTAfter the retreat of Rome from Western Europe in the 5th century,agriculture across Europe became less intensive. Woodlandgradually re-encroached on ancient agricultural land, followinga population decline and an economic collapse.68 As these forestswere gradually cleared or became royal property, the custom ofturning pigs onto them became restricted by law. This restrictionwas, in part, to protect the forests for other species, especially deerfor hunting, but also to protect the forests themselves.

The Domesday Book often shows reductions in the number ofwoodland pigs between 1086, when the survey was taken, and1066. For example, one holding in Norfolk was recorded as ‘Thenwood for 200 swine, now for 100’. This reduction in woodland areawas not accompanied by an increase in arable land.69 Most likely,trees were felled for timber and left behind acres of uncultivabletree stumps, and no acorns for the pigs to feed on.

By the 16th and 17th centuries, the Crown was coming underincreasing financial pressure and began to look to the royal Forestsas previously untapped sources of revenue. Legislation indicatesthat the rich were offering money for information relating not onlyto serious crimes, but also for the breaking of more traditional rules,including the pannage of pigs. In 1542, the king commanded theEarl of Southampton to investigate pannage for pigs on EnfieldeChase from Michaelmas to Martinmas, commanding that ‘hogs onthe chase to be ringed or pegged under a pain of 12d., half to goto the king and half to the informer’.70 The compulsory ringingof pigs is another method used by landlords to protect the forestfloor; rings prevent the natural rooting behaviours, leaving theforest floor comparatively intact.

The Victorian nostalgia for pannage did not extend into theemerging scientific class. Scientists looking at forest regenerationreference pannage as a former evil, one that was thankfully nolonger practised.71

However, this distaste for grazing pigs is not a permanentscientific opinion. Ecologists interested in the effect of pigs oninvertebrate life have reported that pigs’ presence increasesthe biological activity on the forest floor,72 and that theeffect is pronounced when the grazing is seasonal, rather thancontinuous.73


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The pigs’ ability to root, once considered problematic, may nowbe used to maintain the open character of deciduous woodlands byrooting invasive plants and saplings that would otherwise colonisethe area. Active forest management systems such as pollardingand short-rotation coppice are well suited to inter-cropping withpigs, and are gaining in popularity with modern forest managersand scientists.74,75

THE FUTUREIn modern times, pannage has remained a marginal system in theNew Forest, with numbers of pigs having fallen dramatically fromthe 1860s, whilst the numbers of ponies and cows has continuedto increase, as shown in Fig. 2. Now regulated under the 1964New Forest Act, the length of the pannage season varies, witha compulsory minimum of sixty consecutive days, dependent onthe amount of mast the Forest officials think will be produced.According to the National Park Authority, the purpose of pannageis to ‘hoover up fallen acorns which are poisonous to ponies andcattle’. The fee levied for the right of pannage is now only a‘token’.76

The protection of the Dehesas is in part due to the conservativeinfluence of large and absentee landowners,49 and also to thehistorical profitability of cork production. However, the wineindustry’s use of cork is rapidly declining, reducing the viability ofthe entire ecosystem.77

In today’s competitive and global market, producers must notfocus only on their ability to produce efficiently, but also on theirability to market their products. So we must ask ourselves: Whatprompts consumers to purchase a particular product from the vastarray on the supermarket shelves?

McGuirk et al. divided consumers into three segments: segment1 consisted of the 38.7% of consumers who are highly concernedabout food safety and quality; segment 2 consisted of the 37.3%of consumers who are highly concerned about food safety andnutrition issues as well as being price conscious; and finally, thethird segment consisted of the 23.9% of consumers who havefew concerns about food safety and nutrition.78 For segments1 and 2, low prices were not the main factor behind productchoice, with consumers placing their ethical considerations abovethose of their wallets. These data are supported by that of Kinseyet al., who reported that only 19% of pork consumers weremotivated primarily by price,79 and of Richman, who found that71% of consumers were interested in purchasing foods that wereproduced in an environmentally conscious manner.80

Although meat is often sold as an undifferentiated productwhen these data are considered together, it becomes apparentthat there is growing demand for differentiated, or niche, porkproducts. Producers of niche pork tend to make two differentclaims about their product: either that it is of superior quality, orthat it is produced to higher social or ethical standards.

The global future of pork production depends on effectivelyaddressing the public’s increasing concerns regarding animalwelfare and health;81 and if the European pig industry wants tosurvive against cheaper imports, it must look to fill growing nichemarkets with clearly differentiated and premium products. Andsometimes, it seems, the best way to move forward is to lookback: one system that has the potential to produce pork withboth improvements in physical meat quality and social attributesis traditional woodland rearing.

The continued existence of the cork–pork ecosystems of theSpanish Dehesas provides a model for the modern integration of

Figure 2. Numbers of animals turned onto the New Forest in thepannage season. (Data collected from Commoners’ Defence Association,1956–2009.)

pigs into woodland ecosystems: the pork needs to be high quality,sold as a differentiated product and strongly marketed. This willsupport and bolster the woodlands’ other sources of income, bethat cork production, timber or tourism.

A guiding principle of modern, scientific agriculture is ‘morefrom less’. However, further intensification may not be possible orpalatable. As the claims of Varro and Vancouver that pannage porkhas improved flavour are proved, and as mast feeding is shownto produce beneficial fat profiles, these ancient systems have thepotential to once again expand into the mainstream. Perhaps, oneday, people may once again say ‘acorns, such as pigs eat’.

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