RTD2farm - Sharing research results and transferring technical knowledge and technology to pig farmers
The European Union has co-financed a number of research projects generating a great deal of information, but they were mostly heritage of the scientific community. In practice, the effort put in place to encourage the progress of the agricultural sector has performed below expectations.
Just to overcome this lack of technology transfer between science and agriculture, in 2012 was launched the project RTD2Farm. The project is focused on pig related science fields and pig farming as pigs are the main animals for meat production in the EU. RTD2Farm covers the main big areas of interest; Genetics/Breeding, Farm Management and Feeding. RTD2Farm involves the main players of the process: RTD providers, technology transfer experts and farmers. The project includes 11 partners from 3 countries which represent a diversity of livestock farming in the EU:
Benelux represented by Belgian partners has a similar “farm landscape” (farm size and production technologies), covers a small area and has a high uptake of new knowledge and technologies.
Austria has a very divers farming landscape with a diverse uptake of new knowledge and technologies. Italy has more small farms where dissemination of knowledge and technology is especially challenging.
It is the aim of the project to develop an information tool for pig producers and multipliers by systematising science based information and to analyze the different ways of knowledge and technology transfer to pig producers. The project will bring together pig farmers and multipliers with the scientific community via a web-based information tool and in addition the project will introduce a Lifelong learning platform, named WikiPigs.
The first objective was to gather information on the research activities currently implemented in Europe or that have been recently completed, and to organise the information in a clear and well- structured way in order to disseminate at the end of the project the results to the final beneficiaries of the project. Each project has been described using standardised template that includes the following sections: project acronym, project title, project type, duration, contact details, overall project description/abstract, keywords, project aims, research results, beneficiaries of the research results, expected practical applications of the results, final beneficiary type. The data was collected from information available on the internet and by telephone interviews with the respective projects’
contact persons. A list of the contacts from European research organisations listed per country was created. This database represents a first step into establishing an overall framework for cooperation between the project and other research organisations and pig experts across the EU.
The next step in the project was to map the pig famers’ interest in specific topics and to map existing national and transnational technology transfer instruments. In order to analyze farmers’
needs and interest a questionnaire was conducted. Farmers’ needs were collected at different levels: personal/telephone interviews with farmers, contacts with groups of farmers, literature
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no. KBBE- 265661. The text of this report represents the authors' views and does not necessarily represent a position of the
European Commission who will not be liable for the use made of such information.
reviews, journals and magazines. Based on these results and the collected research project a matrix was developed, which allows a matchmaking between farmer needs and scientific/technology knowledge. In order to standardize/translate the matrix from the science base side and farmer needs, it was necessary to focus on keywords in order to facilitate the link between these two sides (sciences and needs) of the matrix. Keywords were standardised and provided for each area: nutrition, farm management and breeding/genetics.
In order to know how farmers are informed on latest research results and new topics the existing knowledge & technology (KT) transfer techniques were analyzed. The report includes a general approach, summarising regional, national and international KT transfer techniques. Examples are given for non-EU regions (USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia), Europe and in particular the partner (= case study) countries Belgium, Austria and Italy; based on this information gathering, a SWOT analysis (in terms of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) was performed.
As a result the key factors for successful knowledge and technology transfer will be identified. The outcomes of these project findings will be taken into account during the further structuring of a sustainable information transfer model to stakeholders.
Next steps in the project included training on national level and the development of a sustainable information transfer model. The development of the training sessions with regard to contents and presentation form is another topic of importance. In the direct training sessions on national level specifically farmers and multipliers have been addressed. The aim of the training sessions is to path the way of innovative ideas into practice. With feedback forms and after-session-contacts responses will be collected.
Based on these results the RTD2Farm project will try to establish a strong interaction link towards multipliers and stakeholders. Stakeholders involved in the pig business are not only pig producers, but also e. g. suppliers of raw materials, resources and equipment, advisors, scientific experts, public institutions, administrations etc. The collected contents and solutions shall be processed by the established system of knowledge transfer. This will result in an “EU Centre of Excellence in Pig Sciences” (CEPS). CEPS will be created in order to deploy efforts in RTD2Farm activities and give continuity to the project’s mission, which is increased uptake of RTD results by pig farmers.
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no. KBBE- 265661. The text of this report represents the authors' views and does not necessarily represent a position of the
European Commission who will not be liable for the use made of such information.
