Maeve Henchion, Co-ordinator of BovINE at the network project's final dissemination project meeting in Brussels, says:"The BovINE network project has clearly shown that farmers are a significant source of innovation in their own right, and thus play an important part in finding and implementing solutions to the sustainability challenges they face."

Presentations by partners focused on sharing good practices and solutions from research based on the project's four themes of animal health & welfare, socioeconomic resilience, production efficiency & meat quality and environmental sustainability.

Solutions were identified by project partners to address the grass roots needs of farmers, and collated by the project's thematic leaders and Network Managers across the nine European countries represented in BovINE. 340 good practices are now freely available for all to access on the BovINE Knowledge Hub (BKH).

DG AGRI's Diego Canga Fano, newly appointed lead on Research, Outreach and Geographical Indications and BovINE's opening guest speaker for the policy session said:

"DG AGRI recognises and appreciates the valuable work of BovINE in providing evidence-based knowledge to create solutions for farmers as well as insights for policymakers and all stakeholders. BovINE's innovations will contribute to ensuring that livestock production plays its part in securing a sustainable and circular food system."

Markus Rombach, Deputy Group Leader (Animal Production) of Agridea, Switzerland, BovINE Advisory Board Member and active member of EUFRAS, European Forum for Agricultural and Rural Advisory Services, attended both morning and afternoon sessions and said:

"The transnational BovINE network has collected and validated a lot of very useful knowledge. Agridea, our agricultural advisory services in Switzerland, are already taking this knowledge and translating it into formats that work for our farmers. I expect that other EUFRAS member organizations will now also use the generated insights and take advantage of the extensive knowledge that BovINE has provided and make it widely available to their farming networks."

The three-year EU funded BovINE network project ends on 31st December 2022.

Information on the research innovations and good practices generated by the network and the 'on farm' demonstrations arranged by partners are available to access on the BovINE Knowledge Hub (BKH). The project's website provides links to a wealth of additional resources including animations, webinars and multi-language materials accessed via the country flags of the nine partner countries.

BovINE's Project Manager Richard Lynch concludes:

"With targeted policy interventions, and support from farm and specialist advisors, the solutions identified by the BovINE network, and freely available on the BovINE Knowledge Hub, are ready for implementation throughout Europe."