RUMINATE

Animal husbandry is strongly linked to the environment; both impacting and being shaped by it. Livestock farming, which contributes approximately 14.5% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions, is a major driver of climate change, which in turn threatens productivity, animal welfare, and the sector’s resilience. RUMINATE aspires to address two major interconnected challenges: reducing methane emissions from cattle and enhancing heat stress resilience in sheep. Through a multi-actor approach, RUMINATE will co-design and co-develop scalable, cost-effective solutions and tools for diverse production systems, including conventional and organic, while maintaining animal productivity, welfare, and biodiversity. Central to the project is the Future Farming Design Studio (FFDS) network, which will actively engage key stakeholders, map the current livestock landscape, consolidate existing knowledge, and identify gaps and opportunities for innovation. Nutritional solutions will be tested in small-scale in vivo trials alongside genetic screening to investigate genotype × environment interactions and identify climate-related markers. Genomic prediction pipelines will be developed to estimate breeding values for methane emissions mitigation and heat stress resilience enhancement. Building on these results, (a) low-emission and heat-resilience nutritional protocols, (b) genetic panels targeting relevant markers, (c) predictive models projecting long-term effects of interventions on relevant phenotypes will be developed and (d) integrated into a practical, user-friendly Decision Support Tool. These solutions will be tested, validated, and refined in on-farm demonstrations within the FFDSs, while a dissemination, exploitation, and communication strategy will maximise visibility and impact. Ultimately, RUMINATE links research with livestock systems to ensure knowledge transfer, support evidence-based policy development, and advance climate-resilient ruminant farming systems.