
BovINE
Type Media Article
BovINE (Beef Innovation Network Europe) has been established across 10 EU member states to focus solely on the needs of the 255,000 farmers that constitute the EU bovine meat sector. Coordinated by Teagasc (IE), BovINE is built around a multi-actor approach, requiring focused cooperation between researchers, advisors, farmers and other relevant actors/players in the beef industry to facilitate knowledge exchange and acceptance of co-created solutions.
About Bovine
BovINE (Beef Innovation Network Europe) has been established across 10 EU member states to focus solely on the needs of the 255,000 farmers that constitute the EU bovine meat sector. BovINE is tackling sustainability challenges, identified as urgent by beef farmers themselves, by bringing together beef farmers, farming organisations, advisors, researchers and other stakeholders to collectively develop practical innovations that can be implemented on European beef farms immediately. Coordinated by Teagasc (IE), BovINE is built around a multi-actor approach, requiring focused cooperation between researchers, advisors, farmers and other relevant actors/players in the beef industry to facilitate knowledge exchange and acceptance of co-created solutions.
Recognising the role of farmers as innovators, BovINE will draw on the reservoir of knowledge which exists at farm level on the four related key themes of:
- socio-economic resilience
- animal health & welfare
- production efficiency & and meat quality
- environmental sustainability.
Using these themes, BovINE will also identify research findings that have not yet been widely adopted at farm level. Before recommending uptake their feasibility in practice will be assessed, including demonstration of such solutions on multiple beef farms across Europe.
Each year “priority” topics for each of these themes will be identified by European beef farmers. For 2020, these priority topics are:
Join the network if you want to influence the priority topics for 2021 and 2022.
Project Aims
The overall aim of the project is to stimulate and foster knowledge exchange and the integration of research and good practice into practical innovation at regional, national and international levels between the relevant actors within the European beef sector.
The specific objectives are to:
- Establish a network of EU beef farmers, farming organisations, researchers, advisors, other agricultural professionals, and other relevant actors/players, driven by four sub-themes (Socio-Economic Resilience, Animal Health & Welfare, Production Efficiency & Meat Quality and Environmental Sustainability) and nine national/regional sub-networks.
- 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.
- 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 accessible to all players in the European beef industry.
- Create and disseminate end-user material to demonstrate good practice and practice-ready research to the relevant audiences (beef farmers, advisors, policy makers).
- Collate ideas from end-users for further innovation-driven research and communicate this back to the EIP-AGRI network and policy makers.
Partners in Ireland
There are two BovINE partners in Ireland:
1. Teagasc -
- Prof. Maeve Henchion - Coordinator
- Richard Lynch - Project Manager
Teagasc will coordinate the project and establish a beef innovation network at EU level to enhance sustainability of the EU beef sector. With ILVO (Belgium) and INTIA (Spain), it will provide a lead support role in network formation and implementing the multi-actor approach. It will also work closely with regional practice partner, the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) to establish a national beef innovation network in Ireland. Leveraging its research staff it will identify research that is not yet in widespread use across the four thematic areas of the project, and through its advisory and education staff it will identify good practices, and support knowledge exchange. It will test some of the solutions identified in its research and demonstration farms to assess feasibility of proposed solutions to farmer’s needs. Finally, it will use its dissemination channels, and committed media partners, to access advisors and farmers in Ireland and use its position within organisations such as EUFRAS, SCAR and professional bodies such as the European Association of Animal Production to communicate about the project at EU level.
2. Irish farmers association (IFA)
The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) will work with Teagasc to form a national beef network to identify Irish beef farmers’ priority needs, identify good practices, and facilitate knowledge exchange between farmers and researchers in Ireland and between Irish and other European farmers trans-nationally. It also has a key role in ensuring effective dissemination of the project’s results to end-users and to communicate about the project at national and EU level to a range of stakeholders including farmers, industry and policy makers.
Join the mailing list for project news at bovine@minervacomms.net.
For more information, visit the project website