For conference agenda and registration please look here:
]]>Four different sector panels (horses, beef cattle, dairy cattle and sheep) devoted primarily to the exchange of experience, knowledge and insights on the most important challenges arising in a given industry, definition and understanding “High quality” by both animal breeders, producers, and consumers, and the collaboration of all stakeholders. Regardless of the industry, the participants of the meetings pointed to the health-promoting aspect of consuming high-quality meat and the need for effective education in this area for consumers from an early age. The necessary condition is special care for maintaining high quality not only in the technological process itself, but at every stage of manufacturing and delivering products to the consumer. Participants of industry meetings emphasized that the main concern and challenge for producers and breeders is animal welfare – proper animal nutrition, grazing, slaughter in pastures, shortened supply chain. It is essential to implement modern technologies such as novel sensors, distant and cloud management, along with Big Data opportunities and blockchain verification.
The Chairman of the Estonian Dairy Cluster Hardi Tamm shared EDCs experience about innovation cooperation within the sector and cross-border as well as introduced EDC success stories such as herd health audit program , express test MAVAS for quick measurement of mastitis pathogens and health data sensor Wisecow.
]]>However, the potential of ICT is not yet fully been utilized due to challenges such as data access, ownership and data interoperability; inadequate skills of different stakeholders issues and lack of suitable ready-made solutions for the end-users hindering the exchange of data along the value chain;
The project SustainIT (Releasing the Potential of ICT for Sustainable Milk and Beef Cattle Value Chains) aims to:
The project is implemented through the Living Labs established in each participating country, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and germany. The Living Lab approach assumes active involvement of users in each stage of research, development and innovation process. The SustainIT Living Labs will bring together dairy and beef value chain and ICT actors such as farmers, veterinarians, processing industry, retailers, consumers, policy makers, researchers, ICT developers, technology providers and innovation brokers. The multi-actor approach will ensure that the ICT challenges and experience of each stakeholder group are understood and will help to find solutions together that would meet the needs of all value chain stakeholders as well as consumers.
The project SustainIT brings together consortium members with very specific expertise on technology, agri-food value chains, innovation management, governance and policy. With their unique national and transnational networks and knowledge, partners will complement each other expertise and help to explore ICT adoption in transnational context. Consortium members are Estonian Dairy Cluster and Estonian University of Life Sciences (Estonia), University of Oulu (Finland), Halmstad University (Sweden) and Technical University of Munich (Germany). ERA-NET Cofund ICT-AGRI-FOOD program project working period is three years and its budget 942 800 euros.
“Digitalization and latter related activities are one of Estonian Dairy Cluster’s (EDC) top priorities. SustainIT fits well with other digitization activities such as establishment of automated solution for collecting bovine health data and mapping of the usage of multilateral data exchange or project beefEST. If we bring along other countries experience and knowledge and sharing our own we can do more” said Chairman of EDC, Hardi Tamm.
More information can be found at project website
Contact: Anne Põder, anne.poder@piimaklaster.ee
]]>The aim of the project is to create a beefEST prototype data management application for beef animal herd farmers. It should combine breeding data and data concerning parentage with daily animal health data, herd and pasture management information. The goal is to create a convenient tool for farmers raising both cross-bred and pure-bred beef animal herds, to ensure the efficient use and collection of both breeding and accounting records, thus contributing to day-to-day livestock management. The system should work on both a computer and as a mobile application, regardless of the operating system.
The adoption of the system will enable improved herd management, and more profitable and environmentally friendly production through the more efficient use of data. The improved use of data is an important prerequisite for the digitalisation of agriculture. In this way, resource use and the ecological footprint are reduced, while efficiency is increased. Each new, functioning modern digital tool indirectly supports the development of unique data exchange solutions.
The beefEST project is being implemented by the Estonian Dairy Cluster, and the Animal Breeders´ Association of Estonia, together with our research partner The Competence Centre on Health Technologies. beefEST’s work will take place from May 2020 through April 2023. beefEST is part of the cross-border EIP cooperation, led by the Estonian Dairy Cluster, with the Finnish EIP working group.
The project’s budget is EUR 427,867.90, of which EUR 347,742.32 is measure support, and EUR 80,125.90 is self-financing by the applicants. The project’s activities are supported within the framework of measure 16.2 of the Estonian Rural Development Plan for 2014–2020
]]>Activities are divided into two major themes:
Dairy farming is a strategic area in Estonia, made possible by excellent climatic conditions and many other prerequisites. Increasingly intensified production conditions have caused reduced longevity and reproduction of cows, which indicates the need for systemic approach to issues of animal health and nutrition. Special attention should be paid to the health of young stock. Growing labour shortage creates tensions in animal farming. Extensive deployment and development of digital tools represents one possible way for finding solutions. In order to implement the potential, it is necessary to create an automated solution for collection and sharing of health data for dairy farmers and use the combination of these and other data in supply chain.
The most important objective of the action plan consists in finding new solutions to problems arising from increasing labour shortage. Digital solutions in dairy production are expected to allow Estonian dairy products to stand out and distinguish from the products of our competitors in the future. That will hopefully increase the number of more expensive dairy products sold by industries. After all, one of the priorities of the Dairy Cluster is to facilitate the export capacity of the sector.
Implementation of collecting health data is an important step towards the development of precision farming technologies. Based on health data of the animals, we can draw conclusions regarding both an individual animal, herd and entire dairy sector (big data). Resulting big data system has a huge future potential, because transferring and automated processing of health data of individual animals essentially allows creating electronic health passport of a bovine animal. Second phase applications include automated herd-specific and population-specific information management and interactions with private sector organisations and public agencies (e-PRIA; Veterinary Supervision, Animal Recording Centre, etc). Resulting savings and new business opportunities derived from compilation and exchange of data can definitely be measured in millions of euros, not to mention providing a solution in a situation, where some things cannot be done due to labour shortage.
The activities of Estonian Dairy Cluster are supported under measures 16.0, 16.1 and 16.2 of the Estonian Rural Development Plan 2014–2020.
]]>In addition to new dairy barn, the construction project included completion of a shed for 250 calves, extension to calving shed, new feed storage and silo and two liquid manure storages with the capacity of 12,000 m³. Total investment reached 3.5 million euros. Kaiu LT OÜ together with Väätsa Agro and Kärla PÜ are members of the group managed by AS Trigon Dairy Farming Estonia.
]]>Veterinary Kerli Mõtus, PhD, talked about herd health audit programme and its economic impact and economist Ants-Hannes Viira, PhD, gave an overview of the impact of dry matter content on different players in the value chain and analysis of pricing mechanism. Both presenters represent the Estonian University of Life Sciences, a partner of Dairy Cluster.
Slides of the presentations will open when clicking on the title. All the other presentations made at the Dairy Forum are available here.
]]>The workshop shared the experience of the EIP working groups, discussed the promotion of impact, mapping the challenges ahead and sharing the positive experiences of previous EIP working groups with the start-up EIP groups. As a second task, ideas were gathered at the workshop on the post-2020 EIP-AGRI work program. Among other things, answers were sought to questions on how to facilitate the implementation of EIP-AGRI, as well as ways of reducing the reporting and dissemination of results by EIP working groups.
Estonia was represented by Mr. Hardi Tamm, Chairman of Dairy Cluster, Mr. Konstantin Mihhejev, representative of the Rural Networking Department of the Agricultural Research Center, and Ms. Helena Pärenson, Specialist of the Department of Research and Development of the Ministry of Rural Affairs.
Original materials can be found here: https://ec.europa.eu/eip/agriculture/event/eip-agri-seminar-operational-group-to-impact
]]>According to Siim Riisenberg, member of the management of Kehtna Mõisa OÜ, new building helps to make better use of the technological capacity of entire farm complex, maintain low cost price of milk and enhance competitiveness. Construction of new liquid manure storages were necessary for environmental purposes. Total cost of new buildings was 1.6 million euros.
Photo gallery about the opening ceremony is available here:
]]>In 2017, Dairy Cluster commissioned the development of technical platform for biosensor system that allows determining three common pathogens causing mastitis in the milk with 20 minutes. The second phase of the development work in MAVAS project aims at preparation of device that can be used in farms.
MAVAS project involves comparison of the results gained from using biosensor with accredited laboratory methodologies, optimisation of measuring methods in various farms, preparation of biosensor prototype and test equipment for performing analyses in farms, and determination of quantitative content of pathogens in mastitis-affected milk. The selection of microbes causing clinical and hidden mastitis is defined on a farm-by-farm basis while considering the pathogen distribution patterns, determined by prototype sensor devices placed in farms in the framework of the project. Such sensors also allow optimisation of the structure of test equipment and give feedback concerning its ease of use under actual operating conditions.
In the course of the project, it is intended to widen the selection of pathogens identified by the biosensor.
MAVAS project is implemented by Dairy Cluster, companies Kaiu LT OÜ and Kuivajõe Farmer OÜ and scientific partners TorroSen OÜ and Estonian University of Life Sciences. Works are scheduled from September 2018 to August 2022. Project constitutes a part of Dairy Cluster coordinated cross-border cooperation with Finnish ÄLYREHU working group. This is the first instance of cross-border cooperation between working groups of European Innovation Partnership.
The activities of Estonian Dairy Cluster are supported under measures 16.1 and 16.2 of the Estonian Rural Development Plan 2014–2020.
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