Precision Livestock Farming is one part of the seven solution domains of ICT-AGRI. Both EU-projects share a lot commonalities.
The EU-PLF consortium met on 2-3 April in Unna (Germany) 17 months after project start to share on the progress and results achieved so far.
On the first day each partner presented the achieved progress, afterwards solutions to overcome occuring difficulties were discussed .
As a first result a list of key indicators and gold standards (excellent examples) for assessing the hunsbandry conditions was presented. These indicators and standards can potentially be used by PLF tools to make sense of the collected animal data and translate it into valuable information for the farmer and the production chain. Each key indicator is combined with an indentified technology that has the potential to be used for measuring gold standards.
The EU-PLF project supports 16 farms spread across Europe. There are 10 pig-fattening farms, 5 broiler farms and 1 calf farm. Each species needs different technologies so different PLF-technologies have been implemented. Thus far, there are specific indicator and standard lists for all mentioned animals. A number of selected key indicators, representing at least one of the domains (welfare and health, environmental load and productivity) are monitored by the implemented systems on farms. These systems are now collecting data on a regular basis.
Kees Lokhorst, who is also involved in ICT-AGRI-2 presented the initial list of PLF-relevant socio and economic indicators that were derived from experts, stakeholders and a European questionnaire on PLF aspects. Thus the most important social key indicators of PLF were labour conditions and duration, job related pride/motivation, availability of advisory systems, successor for farm business to continue the farm. The most important economic key indicators were feed conversion, growth, health costs, delivery weight and energy costs.
A first version of a calculation model for the PLF-relevant socio-economic indicators was presented but more work is still needed to finalise models that are generic enough to apply to all different situations.
As another part of the project 15 teams of young entrepreneurs have been identified who are willing to develop PLF projects for commercial use. Currently nine teams are being coached by EU-PLF project partners to get their feet into the PLF market. These nine teams will participate in a competition for the selection of four teams that will finally receive financial support for developing their spin-off company.
The second day of the meeting was dedicated to Value Creation Group and SME Drive. The aim of the VCG is to provide guidance on the benefits that can expected from the use of PLF technologies. The SME Drive group task is to brief partners on the procedure used to detect promising new PLF technologies and young entrepreneurs that are willing to develop them to the market.
The productive meeting finished with the discussion of plans for the next steps in the project.
To further disseminate efforts of the project, on 25 August 2014, EU-PLF is co-organising a full-day of PLF sessions at the EAAP Annual Meeting in Copenhagen. During the sessions, more results from the project will be shared as well as a comparison of PLF technologies in USA and in the EU. More information on the sessions will become available on the project website.
For more information on EU-PLF contact Daniel Berckmans (daniel.berckmans@biw.kuleuven.be).
For more detail of what was discussed during the meeting, read the short news or the full news story.