Fitter Livestock Farming workshop

Towards environmentally friendly livestock farming

The livestock sector contributes substantially to the European economy and to the vitality of many European countries. The livestock sector also has great potential to contribute to mitigating climate impact. In the EU, whilst livestock are currently responsible for 7% of total emissions, there is a view that using grass to feed ruminants like cattle and sheep offers huge mitigation potential as grass is a large reservoir able to hold excess CO₂. New technologies and relevant incentives like being able to select the most efficient animals will enable the livestock sector to use best practices to enable it to come close to CO₂ neutrality as well as reducing methane and NO₂ emissions. If these measures are taken up alongside reducing deforestation and better use of soils for agricultural production the livestock sector in Europe will be starting to significantly contribute to mitigation of climate impacts. In monogastric animal production, the use of innovative green protein (from grass), of precision feeding and the identification of new selection traits based on feed efficiency hold much promise to save feeds, reduce land use, and breed animals that are resilient to climate change.

Another relevant topic is the gene banks. The animal gene banks are an investment for countries and research institutions as well as an asset for the livestock sector. A better knowledge of these collections is key to stimulate to their use. However, information about gene bank collections is often hard to find for a breeder, because these gene bank collections are scarce.

The Fitter Livestock Farming PG focuses on these topics and is working on solutions and proposals to turn the EU sustainable livestock farming into reality.

Towards a competitive livestock production – how to prepare the future?

On 06 November, the afternoon session “What R&I can deliver to support climate mitigation and adaptation in livestock farming“, organised by the ATF and the Fitter Livestock Farming PG will take place in Brussels. The session will present products, tools, devices and systems, developed by the EU-funded projects from the Fitter Livestock Farming PG, that are tackling challenges in animal production through innovation to improve food security and livestock farming sustainability.

A Policy Paper on Sustainable European livestock farming systems

This workshop will provide inputs for a Policy Paper to be defined by the Fitter Livestock Farming PG. The paper, to be provided by end of the year, will propose priorities for research and innovation for Horizon Europe funding programme, from the European Commission.

Programme

Wednesday 06 November 2019

• Welcome, by Jean-Louis Peyraud, ATF President and Nic Friggens, Fitter Livestock Farming
• Short introduction, by Jean-Charles Cavitte, European Commission – DG AGRI
• Insights into projects outcomes: what is in for stakeholders on the common theme?
  • Chair: Nic Friggens, coordinator GenTORE and CDB cluster
  • Introduction by Nic Friggens
  • Pitches by 6 projects coordinators from the Fitter Livestock Farming CDB cluster: Feed-A-Gene (Jaap van Milgen), SmartCow (René Baumont), GenTORE (Nic Friggens), IMAGE (Michèle Tixier-Boichard), SAPHIR (Marie-Hélène Pinard), GplusE (Andrew Cromie)
• What R&I is needed to support climate mitigation and adaptation in livestock farming
  • Discussion with project coordinators and the audience
  • Moderation: Vivi H. Nielsen, ATF Vice-President for research providers/Aarhus University
  • With the contributions of Methagene, Smarter and Roadmap, HealthyLivestock, Bovine, Eurodairy, Ok-Net-EcoFeed
• Recap and ATF vision, by Jean-Louis Peyraud, ATF President
• Closing

Documents

• Insights into projects outcomes: what is in for stakeholders on the common theme?
• ATF-CDB press release
• Policy brief of the Fitter Livestock Farming group