Rural economies across Europe, and associated countries, heavily rely on small ruminant (SR) systems (sheep and goat), particularly in areas unsuitable for other alternative agriculture purposes and high nature value areas. Despite recent advances in digital technologies to improve farm practices and Electronic Identification being mandatory, the SR sector shows a slow rate of farmers’ uptake and a decline in SR population. There is a need to improve awareness and knowledge transfer on the potential of technology applications and return on investment. Sm@RT aimed to improve understanding, awareness and uptake of the different useful technologies currently available to the SR sector, and further to facilitate “solutions to needs” and identification of technology gaps, to ultimately improve financial returns and farm sustainability.
The overall objectives of the project were to:
• create a European/International network of farmers, scientists, technicians and advisors, around the use of PLF and digital technologies in SRs,
• identify stakeholders’ needs for technology uses and available solutions across the EU that could respond to those needs,
• encourage knowledge exchange, technology adoption and communication between farmers and stakeholders of the SR sector, via workshops, farm training sessions and open days,
• increase awareness of DT for the SR sector using trusted means of communications and by sharing key findings with the scientific community and policy makers.
Sm@RT used an original multi-actor approach, relying on 5 different levels of networking as follows:
1. A Network Facilitator (NF), one person per country. National Facilitators were the main drivers of this methodology.
2. Scientific and Technical Group (STG) in each country which helped implement the project and identify and mobilise different national networks and operational groups.
3. A Digifarm in each country and per production type. They were demonstration/research sheep or goat farms, which were well equipped with PLF technologies and/or with some digital equipment, used as a booster for new technologies and innovation, and for training sessions to farmers.
4. Innovative Farm: They were commercial farms who already used some of the PLF technology for their management, and who shared their views and uses with other farmers, as peer-to-peer exchanges during demonstration days.
5. Small Ruminant-AKIS composed of relevant national organisations and networks with large stakeholder representativeness, EIP-AGRI Operational Groups and farmers’ groups.
After 3.5 years of work, the project concluded that:
• Training sessions on Digifarms and Farm Demonstration on Innovative farms proved an ideal medium for peer-to-peer knowledge transfer regarding the use of technologies.
• The main barriers to uptake are linked to costs of technologies, and also to the lack of training options, after-sales advice, confidence in one’s skills and compatibility between the devices.
• Sharing of knowledge and experiences between farmers, researchers and other stakeholders in different countries proved invaluable.
• There is a lot of information regarding cost of technologies, but the information is often dispersed and not always in a format (or language) which is easy to understand or to adapt to one’s farming situation. Cost-benefit analyses are necessary for farmers to fully decide on investing in technologies or not.
