Overview of 2nd series of TechCare National Workshops

By Eva Sossidou and Sotiris Patsios (ELGO-DIMITRA)

TechCare is a 4-year EU H2020 funded project led by SRUC, which aims to improve welfare management in small ruminant farming systems using innovative precision livestock farming (PLF) technologies. The consent and involvement of stakeholders along the whole value chain of small ruminant farming systems are considered highly important in TechCare project. Therefore, stakeholders are consulted at each step of the project, following a multi-actor approach strategy, to ensure that developed welfare issues and technologies are acceptable, and that they address the stakeholders’ demands and expectations. Following the 1^st series of National Workshops that were organised in spring 2021, in all 9 countries participating in TechCare project, a list of welfare issues in small ruminant farming systems was formulated for each country considering the opinions and views of relevant stakeholders. Based on this list, appropriate PLF tools that can be used as early-warning systems to address these issues were identified by TechCare scientists and were put forth to the relevant stakeholders during the 2^nd series of TechCare National Workshops. The main objective of the 2^nd NWs is to assess these PLF tools based on common criteria, like ease-of-use, cost competitiveness, overall efficiency, etc.

The 2^nd NWs were organised in Spain (20/07/2021), Romania (28/07/2021), France (26/08/2021 and 13/09/2021), Norway (01/09/2021), Italy (15/09/2021), UK (19/09/2021), Israel (26/09/2021), Ireland (01/10/2021) and Greece (14/10/2021). Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions most of these events were organised virtually. However, almost 150 people participated from different sectors, namely: farmers, veterinarians, animal transporters, slaughterhouse owners, researchers academic, administration etc.

The agenda of the 2^nd NWs included an introduction talk on the aims of the event and the role of stakeholders within TechCare project, followed by a short presentation of the outcomes of the 1^st series of NWs concerning the prioritisation of the welfare issues of small ruminant farming systems. Then, the list of PLF tools to be prioritized was presented, and each PLF tool was mapped with the priority welfare issues that addresses. Moreover, basic information concerning the functionality of the PLF tools and technical and economic data were shared among the stakeholders. The stakeholders were invited to ask questions or comment on the presented technologies, and finally a poll was employed based on the following evaluation criteria:

1. Welfare Issue: How well do you think that the specific PLF tools can address the main welfare issues?
2. Cost Effectiveness: What is your opinion on the cost of employing (e.g. buy & use) the specific PLF tool?
3. Easy to Use: How easy to you think that the specific PLF tool can be used by you or your employees?
4. Applicable to Whole Value Chain: How probable do you think that the specific PLF tool can be employed for the whole value chain?
5. Early Warning: How efficient do you believe that the specific PLF tool can provide an early-warning for the main welfare issues?
6. Deployable to Different Systems: How easy do you think that the specific PLF tool can be employed to different systems (e.g. extensive vs. intensive)?
7. Global: How probable is it for you to employ the specific PLF tool in your farm/business?

The results were collected based on the three main production systems (e.g. meat sheep, dairy sheep, and dairy goat) considered in the context of the project. A summary of the results is presented in the following Table 1, where the top-3 PLF tools selected per country and production system are presented.

Table 1: Overview of the top-3 PLF tools selected by the stakeholders during the 2^nd NWs per country and production system.

Upon a first look, it seems that the stakeholders’ opinion is rather uniform in most countries, since the top-3 (favourable) PLF tools are more or less the same, although, the top-3 ranking may change. Another common outcome was that the most important characteristics for the selected PLF tools are the low cost and the ease-of-use. Moreover, many stakeholders expressed their concerns on their ability to collect and handle the amount of data generated from PLF tools for each individual animal. Therefore, for a successful PLF tool operation, the data collection and analysis stage should be as automated as possible, and the application interface design should be quite simple and straightforward.

The organisation of the 2^nd series of NWs was quite successful, since almost all the participants were satisfied from the organisation of the event and their interest on application of PLF tools in small ruminant farming systems was further increased.

Figure 1                                                                       Figure 2

Fig. 1: Overview of the results concerning the evaluation of the French 2nd NW organization

Fig. 2: Typical results from the evaluation of EID Reader (UHF) – RFID poll during the 2nd NW in UK