A key objective of organic farming is that animals are fed with feed produced on the farm or neighbouring regions. However, this is still a challenge for many farmers in Europe. Indeed, feed and livestock production, particularly pigs and poultry, are often concentrated in different regions meaning that imported animal feed must be transported long distances to reach the farm. This problem is even more challenging for protein feed, as the organic protein availability can be low or sometimes not available at all. Importing animal feed has economical disadvantages for farmers and can compromise the values of sustainability, animal welfare and decrease consumers’ confidence.
The OK-Net Ecofeed project supported on-farm feed autonomy and was committed to help producers achieve 100% organic rations for monogastric animals. The work carried out aimed at tackling the organic feed objectives for the coming years, including reducing the cost of feed production, improving sustainability and animal welfare, and satisfying consumer expectation for traceability of production.
Within this context, the overall aim of OK-Net EcoFeed is to help farmers, breeders and the organic feed processing industry in achieving the goal of 100% use of organic and regional feed for monogastrics, in particular pigs, broilers, laying hens.
The 4 specific objectives are:
• The project synthesized the scientific and practical knowledge available about organic and regional feed production for monogastrics;
• It created a European network of innovation groups and facilitated exchange and co-creation of knowledge among farmers, business actors, researchers and advisors;
• It collected end-user material and developed new tools adapted to the needs of farmers and business actors. All material and tools were summarised in the EIP common format for practice abstracts.
• Finally, the project extended the platform Organic Farm Knowledge (
https://organic-farmknowledge.org/(si apre in una nuova finestra)) to include the topic of monogastric animal feed.
The project built on the experiences of OK-Net Arable, which was a thematic network addressing organic arable cropping. OK-Net EcoFeed was a logic continuation of OK-Net Arable, making the bridge between feed cultivation over feed processing to animal production. The OK-Net EcoFeed consortium was coordinated by IFOAM Organics Europe and consisted of 11 partners and 8 linked third parties from 11 countries.
