BovINE - Beef Innovation Network Europe

What is BovINE

BovINE is an EU project funded from 2020 to 2022, set up drive the sustainability of the European beef farming sector. It did so by identifying good practices being undertaken by European beef farmers and innovations coming from universities and research institutes that are ready to be put into practice. It focused on knowledge exchange to help address challenges, as identified by farmers themselves relating to:

• socio-economic resilience
• animal health and welfare
• production efficiency
• meat quality
• environmental sustainability. 

Coordinated by Teagasc it was set up across 10 EU countries. BovINE tackled the urgent sustainability challenges faced by beef producers by bringing together beef farmers, farming organisations, advisors and researchers from across Europe to collectively develop practical innovations that could be implemented on European beef farms. These solutions are now freely available on the open online platform BovINE Knowledge Hub.

Aims and objectives

BovINE aimed to promote knowledge exchange between all actors in the European beef sector, and to bring knowledge from research and practice into use at regional, national and international levels. The specific objectives were to:

1. Establish a network of European beef farmers, farming organisations, researchers, advisors, other agricultural professionals, and other relevant actors/players. This network was driven by four sub-thematic (Socio-Economic Resilience, Animal Health & Welfare, Production Efficiency & Meat Quality and Environmental Sustainability) and nine national/ regional sub-networks.
2. Identify and assess beef farmers’ urgent knowledge needs, and evaluate dissemination channels and formats appropriate to share such knowledge, taking account of regional/national specificities.
3. Create an online archive - the BovINE Knowledge Hub (BKH) of practice-ready research solutions and good practices previously analysed in terms of cost-benefit and ability to address beef farmers’ needs, which is accessible to all players in the European beef industry.
4. Create and disseminate end-user material to demonstrate good practice and practice-ready research to the relevant audiences, beef farmers, advisors, policymakers.
5. Collate ideas from end-users for further innovation-driven research, and communicate this back to the EIP-AGRI network and policymakers.

Outcomes

BovINE’s programme of work was driven by the Grass Roots Needs (GRNs) collected directly from European farmers across the nine BovINE countries during the three years of the project, 2020-2022. These Grass Roots Needs are identified according to country on the BovINE website. They may be useful for actors looking to develop new projects that address European farmers’ needs.

A catalogue of solutions identified to address the priority GRNs are available as Practice Abstracts (PAs) on the BovINE Knowledge Hub. These will be of interest to farmers, advisors and others looking for solutions that are ready to be put into practice.

A policy brief was also prepared to show how BovINE-collated solutions can impact the European Green Deal, the Farm to Fork and the EU Biodiversity strategies, and to propose some recommendations for EU policy and the innovation system. This policy brief can be downloaded here (PDF). Other publicly available deliverables are available here.

Press releases

2022

• December - Beef farmers are willing agents of change to drive sustainability of the sector confirms BovINE 
• October - Improving the sustainability of your beef farm: lessons from across Europe Irish BovINE Beef Meeting
• March - Sustainability remains high on European beef farmers’ agendas 

2021

• June - Identifying Practical ‘On Farm’ Innovations
• September - What is sustainable beef production? Are grass-based systems sustainable? 
• November - European Beef Sector gather to drive sustainability

2020

• October - Strong Turnout of Farmers at Positive BoVNE Event 
• October - First BovINE National Beef Event 
• January - Teagasc launch New EU BovINE network project

Publications

2023

Webinar - March -Signpost Series: BovINE - Solutions for Sustainable Beef Farming

2021

Today's Farm, May/June - Beef - BovINE - A project seeking solutions for all European beef farmers (PDF)

2020

Teagasc media article BovINE

This project has received funding form the European Union’s Horiizon 2020 Rural Renaissance Programme. Project No. 862590 under call H2020-RUR-2019-15