BovINE

BovINE will tackle urgent sustainability challenges faced by beef producers by bringing together beef farmers, farming organisations, advisors, researchers and all relevant actors across 10 member states to close the divide between research and innovation in Europe. There are 255,000 farms in the EU bovine meat sector, yet no network focused solely on their needs has been established to date. Coordinated by Teagasc (IE), BovINE is built around the multi-actor approach to implement more intense cooperation between researchers, advisors, farmers and relevant actors to facilitate greater exchange and acceptance of co-created solutions. BovINE draws on the EU, national and regional connections of the 18 consortium members to appropriate networks, on the four related key themes of socio-economic resilience, animal health and welfare, production efficiency & quality and environmental sustainability. Using the multi-actor approach BovINE will (i) capture and share innovative ideas and methods from practice across Europe and (ii) identify and conserve research findings that have not yet been widely adopted, enhancing their potential for integration into practice by assessing feasibility at demonstration farms. BovINE’s strategic and targeted dissemination and communication actions are designed to raise awareness of the project’s innovation potential, and deliver engagement with farmers, their intermediaries and knowledge providers. Through driving effective cooperation between beef producers and researchers, and utilising trusted gatekeepers, BovINE will form a transnational ecosystem to stimulate knowledge exchange at international level to boost the economic viability and sustainability of the European beef-producing sector.