Sustainability appears to be high up on the agenda of European beef farmers as they engage with the Beef Innovation Network Europe (BovINE) to identify key priority topics for 2022.
Farmers, advisors, organisations and researchers from nine EU countries engage with the BovINE project via national and international meetings, to express their needs for information in order to secure sustainable improvements in their practice.
The result of these engagements is the identification of eight new priority topics for BovINE to focus on for the coming year, two topics for each thematic area.
One of the key thematic areas is environmental sustainability. The two priority topics identified under this area are:
- Tools for calculating and improving environmental sustainability on beef cattle farms;
- Methods to enhance biodiversity on beef cattle farms without the need for large investment.
The first topic will focus on using existing tools to calculate the environmental sustainability of beef cattle farms and compare and classify them according to the indicators used.
For the second topic, the BovINE project will identify innovations and good practices that can help farmers in various regions throughout Europe that farm on diverse terrains to take biodiversity measures.
The project team said it will focus not only on measures for both crop and grassland management, but also on measures that aim to improve soil biodiversity and water quality.
Karen Goossens and Riet Desmet from the Ev-Ilvo Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in Belgium, are the joint leaders of the environmental sustainability theme.
They explained what they will focus on in the coming year:
“Driven by consumers, policy makers and farmers themselves, we are evolving to deliver more sustainable farms, but farmers need to be supported and guided to make informed decisions about the way forward.
“Tools to quantify their climate impact can support them to reduce their climate footprint. In addition, there is a need for accessible and cost-effective strategies to improve biodiversity in agricultural areas whilst maintaining productivity on farm.”
Goossens said that national meetings organised by the nine network managers will take place in autumn 2022, and the progress on the project’s endeavours will be shared with the farming networks then.