CCCFarming

Climate Care Cattle Farming Systems

CCCFarming.png

Aim is to develop climate smart cattle farming systems reducing GHG and ammonia emissions while maintaining the social-economic outlook of the farm business. Key words are efficiency of production and care for climate. Central in the approach are innovative housing and manure handling systems in reducing emmissions, like use of composted bedding material, separation of faeces and urine, artificial floor constructions, manure cleaning robots, cow toilet, virtual fencing and ICT data collection techniques, and precision crop fertilization. Promising feeding, breeding and grassland mitigation practices are examined to contribute to the integrated systems approach. Our study will deliver an assessment of the environmental performance of a network of study field farms in eight EU-countries on basis of NPC balance tools and simple emission measurement methods. Researcher–farmer interaction is meant to improve performance. Expertise groups in each country evaluate the outcomes.

Coordinator 
Stichting Wageningen Research, WR, Netherlands 
Peter Groot Koerkamp

Project partners 
Department of Agriculture, Food, Environment and Forestry, UniFi, Italy 
Institute of Animal sciences, LLU, Latvia 
Institute of Animal Breeding and Genetics, JLU, Germany National Research Institute of Animal Production, NRIAP, Poland 
Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Animal Science Institute, LUHS, Lithuania 
Scotland's Rural College, SRUC, United Kingdom 
Institute de l'elevage, IDELE, France 
INRA UMR PEGASE, INRA PEGASE, France 
UMR1069, Sol, Agro & hydro syst, INRA SAS, France 
UMR Ecosystème Prairial, INRA UREP, France 
University of Kentucky, KU, United States 
Federal University of Lavras, UFLA, Brazil 
PLF Lab. Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural Research Organization (A.R.O.) – The Volcani Centre, ARO, Israel

Total requested funding 
1.726.000 €

Start-end date 
01.01.2020 - 31.12.2023

Project duration
36 months

 

News 

The Climate Care Cattle farming project had its Kick-Off in the 1st week of March in Wageningen, the Netherlands (see photo of consortium members). The partners started either at 1st of December 2019 or at 1st of January 2020. Our project intends to work with 60 farmers/farm families spread over eight countries in Europe. Three external partners participate at own cost (from USA, Brazil and Israel). Information about the project content is available at www.CCCfarming.eu
Already at the Kick-Off our Italian partner colleagues were not able to participate because they were all in personal quarantine, due to the Corona situation. During the Kick-Off meeting and afterwards the situation deteriorated in all partner countries. This situation is a big challenge for the starting up period of the project and causes delay in the planning of activities. Choice of farms and NPC data collection procedures are in progress, and interviews with the farm families about their outlook on climate care cattle farming are being prepared.