Impacts

The DairyMix project will bring the following innovations:

• Asses farm typologies for integration of crop and livestock production across Europe and in Latin America
• Collect and evaluate data on mixed crop-dairy systems including data analytics with supervised learning algorithms
• Further refine and implement the OTICE for barn climate optimisation and emission control, and for animal welfare monitoring
• Develop a detailed concept for an EU Level Emission Database (EULED) fed by an internationally distributed emission monitoring network
• Use the models ARMOSA and FarmDyn and link them for mixed farm circularity modelling
• Perform environmental (LCA), economy, and social assessments
• Integrate all three pillars of sustainability into a multi-criteria assessment of circular crop-dairy production systems
• Enable contrasting impetus to the three pillars and allow flexible and context specific concepts for key European areas
• Enable stakeholders, farmers and politicians to make sound, knowledge-based decisions for circular crop-dairy systems
• Inform the consumer about circular crop-dairy-systems and their benefits
• Further refine and enlarge the easy to use and long living online MilKey/DairyMix platform that assists stakeholder and farmers in finding sustainable solutions in their region and that informs the consumer about the key elements of circular crop-dairy systems
• Position Europe as a world-leader in sustainable and circular crop-dairy systems as a blueprint to be transferred to other world regions

DairyMix aims at circularity for dairy cattle production systems including arable crops, grassland and agroforestry systems. While the monitoring and mitigation of GHG is in the centre of the project, the systems approach includes also nitrogen losses, soil carbon and nitrogen, biodiversity, increased protein autonomy, improved utilization of manure nutrients and consumer oriented approaches and combines environmental, economic and social assessment in a multi-criteria analysis. The project will contribute in taking a major step forward in achieving greenhouse gas mitigation and circularity between crop- and dairy farming systems for key European areas and for Latin America.

DairyMix will work on innovative solutions for circular crop-dairy systems. This alone however will not be sufficient. A multitude of technology and management options has been developed over the last years with the aim to increase production efficiency and income and decrease negative environmental impacts. Their implementation however stays far below expectations in large parts of Europe. This is commonly termed the “science-policy gap”. The impact achieved by DairyMix will be a marked increase in the degree of implementation of concepts for sustainable, circular crop-dairy systems. Through their long standing and leading involvement in national and international networks and through their contact with the farming community, the members of the DairyMix team has a clear picture of what is necessary to overcome the existing science-policy-gap.

The following main reasons are responsible for this lack of implementation:

• There is insufficient communication between scientists, farmers, industry and political bodies. The lack of mutual understanding and insight into the specific necessities is a main barrier to the implementation of optimisation measures
• There is a lack of long-term continuous communication between multi-actors that contribute to the process. Many communication processes have been initiated with the start of research projects and have ended with the end of the respective project
• Agriculture is strongly influenced by local conditions. There is no average situation to be described for Europe and thus no universal solutions exist. The diverse climate and topographical conditions across Europe require region-specific concepts

Currently, major barriers against the full exploitation of options for circular crop-dairy systems exist. There is a lack of

• Knowledge on creation and optimisation of mixed crop-dairy systems and their efficiency in the context of whole system thinking and three pillars sustainability assessment
• Flexible concepts to take consideration of specific local conditions in the variety of key European areas
• True multi-actor and multi-stakeholder interaction and communication
• Long-term collaboration beyond the lifetime of short research projects
• Communication and implementation measures to overcome the science-policy gap
• Case studies to proof the practicality of sustainable concepts
• Consumer information and youth education

DairyMix addresses these barriers in its research and dissemination programme and will be a decisive step forward in over-coming them. By doing this, it will milestone in promoting mixed crop-dairy systems and will have a decisive impact on GHG mitigation, better use of nitrogen, securing economic viability and addressing key social impacts. DairyMix will build on latest research (e.g. within the EraNet project MilKey, MELS, M4Models and CEDERS) and continuously integrate novel results.

DairyMix impact will be achieved through:

• Employing an excellent consortium that combines well acknowledged centres of knowledge on crop production, dairy production, GHG and N emissions, precision farming, social sciences, and farm economy and is supported by an enthusiastic advisory board
• Using unique national emission knowhow, modelling and LCA expertise, case study farms and contacts to the farming community for a high added value and progress in knowledge on sustainable concepts crop-dairy system
• Bringing together recent and ongoing national activities in crop and dairy production, precision farming and socio-economy for agriculture
• Combining results into a publicly accessible platform and decision support tool that offers flexible and targeted solutions for circular crop-dairy systems
• Applying a true a multi-actor approach including collaboration from science, industry, farmers associations, community and policy bodies
• Producing clear guidance on region-specific targeted concepts, suggesting measures for their implementation and identifying potential barriers that have to be overcome

Measures to maximize impact

• Dissemination activities and exploitation of results are key in DairyMix and will be ensured through close cooperation of all stakeholder groups by engaging the farming community to make sure that the reorientation to of farming systems of for the future is successful, and innovations are implemented on commercial farms.
• The DairyMix communication strategy is built upon the guidelines on “Communicating EU Research and Innovation”. DairyMix ensures good management by allocating time and money to communication activities. Assistance through professional communicators is guaranteed by involving the public relations offices of the project partners. Continuity is ensured through the maintenance of the website, data repository and the MilKey/DairyMix platform also after the project lifetime.