News & Events - DairyMix

A glass of DairyMix for breakfast

In late October, Dr. Federico Dragoni visited the webinar series GEH Breakfast Club for PostDocs and PhDs, presenting the DairyMix project. The webinar series on ‘Circularity in mixed crop and livestock farming systems, with emphasis on greenhouse gas mitigation’, is hosted by Green ERA-HUB on Agri-food and Biotechology.

Dr. Dragonis talk “Multi-criteria assessment, decision support and management tools for sustainable circular mixed farming systems for dairy production” gave the project objectives, and insights in the diverse data collected from the case study farms participating in the project.

Presenting DairyMix at First National Agroforestry Forum

Serena Bonizzi participated at the “First National Agroforestry Forum”, sponsored by “AIAF-Italian Association of Agroforestry” with the theme of “cultivating and raising with trees.” The conference was held in Rome at the Headquarters of the National Research Council CREA Ricerca.

During the sessions she had the opportunity to present the work of the Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie e Ambientali (DiSAA) of Università degli Studi di Milano within Work Package 2 of the DairyMix Project.

Presentation title: “What role for agroforestry in intensive livestock farming in northern Italy? The Dairymix Project.”

Annual DairyMix meeting 2023 in the autumn sunshine of Milan, Italy

DairyMix Annual Meeting in Milan: partners reviewed project progress, data collection, sustainability assessment and modeling. Field trip to cheese factory and farm for knowledge exchange.

Dairymix_farm — The DairyMix team at the Baronchelli Farm, October 4). Photo credits: Grete Jørgensen (NIBIO)

From October 2^nd to 4^th, the DairyMix project gathered all partners in Milan for their Annual Meeting and General Assembly. The event was held at the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences – Production, Territory, Agroenergy of the University of Milan (UNIMI). In addition to the participants attending the meeting in person, the meeting was also available for digital participation for partners and Advisory Board members who could not travel.

During the meeting, the partners went through the work done in the project work packages. In particular, data collection in the case study farms was completed by August 2023; currently, the data are being quality-controlled and validated by Teagasc, INRAE and UNIMI teams. The modelling framework has been defined by UNIMI and Ruralis, and Italian farms have been used as test cases by the modelling team of UNIMI. Sustainability indicators and the framework for the multicriteria assessment have been developed in a joint effort of Teagasc, INRAE, ATB and UZ coordinated by INRAE. In the next months, the modelling approach will be extended to other case studies, and sustainability and circularity indicators will be calculated.

Dairymix_cheesefactory — The DairyMix team at the Caseificio Torre Pallavicina (October 4). Photo credits: Grete Jørgensen (NIBIO)

After two days going through the work done, having fruitful discussions and planning future data treatment and publications, the last day was dedicated to a field trip, visiting the “Torre Pallavicina” cheese factory (https://www.caseificiotorrepallavicina.it), where the DairyMix team could view the live production of Grana Padano cheese. The DairyMix team would like to thank the Grana Padano Protection Consortium (https://www.granapadano.it) for their support in organising the visit. Later, the DairyMix team visited one of the Italian case study farms, the Baronchelli Farm (https://www.aziendaagricolabaronchelli.com). Here, the farmers kindly gave us a guided tour and detailed insights of their dairy production. Close contact with farmers and the continued exchange of knowledge back and forth between researchers and the stakeholders is key for DairyMix research.

Dairymix_faculty — The DairyMix team at the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences - Production, Territory, Agroenergy of the University of Milan (October 3). Photo credits: Pio Marmoglia (UNIMI)

DairyMix at the XVII EAAE Congress in Rennes

In August Mary Brennan presented the DairyMix project at the XVII EEAE Congress in Rennes, France: “Agri-food systems in a changing world: Connecting Science and Society”.

Great to see all the interest in our work on developing circularity indicators for farms!

#circulareconomy #sustainability

DairyMix at the Aissaunder40 conference in Italy

In July, results of the DairyMix Project were presented by Serena Bonizzi (UNIMI) at the IV Conference AISSA#under40 in Fisciano (SA), Italy.

This conference brought together many young researchers in agricultural sciences!

AISSA: Associazione Italiana Società Scientifiche Agrarie https://www.aissaunder40.com/ #sustainableagriculture #circularity

Serena and her poster titled “Circularity in livestock farming: an emerging research topic or established concept?”

Task-oriented workshop in Ireland

DairyMix researchers from ATB, Teagasc, INRAE, University of Milan and Ruralis met at Teagasc in Athenry (Ireland).

In order to facilitate the exhange between partners of the DairyMix project, one week of intensive work has been organised in one of the Teagasc sites, in Athenry (Ireland). DairyMix researchers from ATB, Teagasc, INRAE, University of Milan and Ruralis met there to modify and adapt the templates for collecting the data in the case study farms, and to prepare the data collection workshop. In this workshop (February 7), the template was presented to the data collectors. The template structure was further clarified and adapted after a follow-up meeting on March 2. The meeting proved to be quite intense, but also quite useful!

Successful kick-off workshop of the DairyMix project in Northern Norway

In the EU-funded DairyMix project, partners from 10 different countries from Europe and Latin America are joining forces to assess circular mixed farming systems for dairy production.

Group picture of DairyMix researchers and farmers — The DairyMix team and farmers at Hamnes during the kick-off meeting in Tjøtta (Norway). Credits: Jon Asbjørn Johnsen

Mixed dairy farming systems are an essential backbone of European agriculture. They produce high quality protein products based on fibrous feed resources that could not be utilized by humans or monogastric animals. Furthermore, these systems create and maintain employment in rural communities by contributing to the conservation of species and to the maintenance of traditional agricultural landscapes and biodiversity. DairyMix strives to implement a multi-criteria assessment approach while developing decision support, modelling and management tools aimed at improving the sustainability of mixed dairy systems.

Selected case studies integrating dairy, crop, and forestry systems will be used to test the effect of novel options, concepts and strategies to reduce of emissions and nutrient losses, and enhance the environmental, economic and social sustainability of mixed farming scenarios.

ser på robot — Picture 2. The DairyMix researchers visited a dairy farm in Norway and were keen to inspect the milking robot. Foto: Grete Jørgensen

DairyMix will develop circularity concepts across a wide range of systems, contributing to (re)connecting livestock and crop systems by achieving synergies that result in a better use of resources. Furthermore, DairyMix will identify agroforestry practices, which are presented as a key option to promote the integrated sustainability of mixed farming systems. In this way, specific and tailored solutions that increase the integration of crop-livestock-forestry systems will be promoted.

The results obtained in DairyMix will be available to a broad audience through the DairyMix platform. This tool will present relevant results for farmers, consumers and other stakeholders interested in investigating circularity concepts applied to mixed dairy and crop production systems. The platform will integrate region specific input variables and will deliver output data that promote the sustainability of a range of mixed systems. By doing so, DairyMix intends to enable science based decision making on social, environmental and economic sustainability as a basis for the implementation of concepts for more integrated crop-livestock systems in key European and Latin American regions.

Project work started in March 2022, and the DairyMix partners met in June 2022 at the Norwegian Bioeconomy Research Institute (NIBIO) in Tjøtta (Norway). This meeting was attended in person by a broad representation of partners and online by additional collaborators. Communication between different partners was constant and intense in order to ensure a successful meeting in Norway. As a result, future lines of action in terms of the selection of case studies, sustainability (economic, social and environmental) and circularity indicators were established. For the latter, future collaboration with other projects of the same call will be explored in order to identify possible synergies. Lastly, the attendees had the opportunity to see first-hand the NIBIO research facilities in Tjøtta and to visit some of their case study dairy farms, receiving extensive explanations of the ongoing projects with the aim of fostering synergies.

20220624_120445 — Picture 3. The island of Skogsholmen now have just a few permanent inhabitants. In earlier times, the fisher-farmer of the Norwegian coast ususally survived on one cow and a few sheep, grazing the wind-swept grasslands. Photo: Grete Jørgensen