This is farming’s defining decade – feeding the world while transitioning to sustainable net zero food production from farm to fork. Dairy is the most important food sector in EU agriculture, present in all Member States. Removing the dairy calf from the dam shortly after birth is dairy’s keynote ethical issue. Providing cow-calf contact (CCC) - allowing calves to stay with their dams or a foster cow for months rather than hours/days, promotes normal, pleasurable cow and calf social behaviour, social skills, social competence and play, championing animal welfare. Importantly, CCC is the most consumer accepted ethical practice for increasing the sustainability of dairy systems.
The current state of the art is that innovative farmers, together with support actors across European countries in response to growing national, societal, consumer and sector needs are developing and applying knowledge in practice to transition to CCC dairy systems. However, the ability of farmers to innovate is influenced by enabling factors at a societal, consumer and sector level, and the ability to weigh up costs and benefits - access to knowledge alone is rarely enough to generate and maintain sustainable innovation. Therefore, transformation to CCC dairy systems is at different stages across Europe and farmers have adapted their own systems to CCC. There is no standard method. There is currently no coordinated European-wide mechanism for sharing this CCC knowledge ready for practice, or development of new CCC knowledge based on the needs, challenges and opportunities of dairy farmers at different stages of CCC innovation.
TransformDairyNet has therefore brought together a multi-actor network to facilitate a tipping point towards wider scale uptake of CCC. TransformDairyNet is a direct response to tackle the urgent needs of farmers, the dairy sector and society to accelerate the transition to a humane and sustainable dairy system.
The objectives of TransformDairyNet are:
1) To accelerate the adoption of CCC systems at scale by mobilising a European Multi-Actor Knowledge and Innovation Network (EKIN) that tackles the most urgent farmer needs and knowledge gaps in CCC systems by fostering cross-pollination of ideas for farmers and support actors at different stages of transformation across Europe.
2) To modernise the sector by bringing science and practice together in the co-generation and sharing of existing CCC knowledge and innovation ready for practice for the distribution of a comprehensive validated package of best CCC practices across the European dairy community.
3) To accelerate dairy innovation through a Living Lab process in National Innovation Practice Hubs mobilised by National Network Facilitators to address farmers’ needs, challenges and opportunities by facilitating the generation of new ideas and funding projects to test and trial innovations on and off farm, including a dedicated Living Lab focused on developing novel sustainability metrics, mitigation and adaptation measures for a pathway towards net zero in CCC dairy systems.
4) To create higher impact by digitalising and sharing TransformDairyNet CCC knowledge ready for practice by co-creating harmonised farmer-facing tools and materials to accelerate the adoption of CCC systems through a comprehensive communication, dissemination and exploitation plan, leveraging validated dairy farmer channels and networks at a regional, national and pan European level.
5) To build capacity, sustain and maximise the impact of TransformDairyNet for the continued acceleration of CCC systems at scale across Europe, by collaborating with EU FarmBook as the go-to European knowledge reservoir for farmers and other support actors, and establish a mechanism for co-generation and sharing of CCC knowledge ready for practice into the future.
