Over 250 delegates from across Europe attended the virtual morning session of the final BovINE dissemination conference, with key EU policy-players including from DG Agri, DG Sante, Copa-Cogeca and EUFRAS attending the afternoon in-person presentation.
At the network project’s final dissemination project meeting in Brussels, co-ordinator of BovINE, Maeve Henchion, said: “The BovINE network project has clearly shown that farmers are a significant source of innovation in their own right, and thus play an important part in finding and implementing solutions to the sustainability challenges they face.”
The event included presentations by partners which focused on sharing good practices and solutions from research based on the project’s four themes of animal health and welfare, socioeconomic resilience, production efficiency & meat quality and environmental sustainability. Project partners identified solutions to address the grassroots needs of farmers. 340 good practices are now freely available for all to access on the BovINE Knowledge Hub (BKH).
DG AGRI’s Diego Canga Fano, newly appointed lead on Research, Outreach and Geographical Indications was the opening guest speaker for the policy session and said: “DG AGRI recognises and appreciates the valuable work of BovINE in providing evidence-based knowledge to create solutions for farmers as well as insights for policymakers and all stakeholders. BovINE’s innovations will contribute to ensuring that livestock production plays its part in securing a sustainable and circular food system.”
Markus Rombach, deputy group leader (animal production) of Agridea, Switzerland, BovINE Advisory Board Member and active member of the European Forum for Agricultural and Rural Advisory Services (EUFRAS) said: “The transnational BovINE network has collected and validated a lot of very useful knowledge. Agridea, our agricultural advisory services in Switzerland, are already taking this knowledge and translating it into formats that work for our farmers. I expect that other EUFRAS member organizations will now also use the generated insights and take advantage of the extensive knowledge that BovINE has provided and make it widely available to their farming networks.”
The three-year EU-funded BovINE network project ends on 31st December 2022. Information on the research innovations and good practices generated by the network and the ‘on farm’ demonstrations arranged by partners are available to access on the BovINE Knowledge Hub (BKH).
