Integrating innovative TECHnologies along the value Chain to improve small ruminant welfARE management

Student exchange at AGRIS (Italy) within TechCare project!

Lisa Feldmann (lisa.feldmann@idele.fr) is an apprentice. She is studying in an engineering agriculture school at Toulouse (South of France). She has joined the TechCare project in December 2020 and she works for “Comité National Brebis Laitières” (CNBL) which can be translate by National Committee for Dairy Sheep in France. CNBL is a partner of the project and supervises the large-scale trials in dairy sheep in France, with its two third parties: Service Elevage Confédération Générale de Roquefort and UNOTEC. In the French dairy sheep pilot farm of “La Cazotte”, Lisa followed closely the trials conducted by Germain TESNIERE, and Jean-Marc GAUTIER (Idele) and the farm team.

Within the framework of her studies, Lisa carried out an international mobility of 7 weeks (June-July) at the “Agenzia per la ricerca in agricoltura” (AGRIS), the agricultural research agency of Sardinia. One experimental farm of this agency, named Bonassai and located in NW of Sardinia, is the Italian dairy sheep pilot within Techcare project.

A few words about her experience:

“My internship at AGRIS was a very enriching experience both from a professional and relational point of view. I was able to discover the technical and professional organization of the dairy sheep sector in Sardinia through exchanges with my colleagues but also through visits of farms. This allowed me to have a good vision of its articulation, very different from the Roquefort area. In addition, I had the chance to participate in the second dairy sheep pilot involved in the TechCare project, which allowed me to compare the experiences and the different operations set up at the La Cazotte farm in France. The main objective of this exchange was to help to select the technologies, partly also studied in pilot farms, that we will test in large-scale dairy sheep farms, starting in the year 2024. The dialogues with the AGRIS team, allowed me to have a better idea of the experiments done and to draw up comparative tables between the technologies implemented in the two pilots. It also allowed to create a stronger link between the pilots and the large-scale trials. Discussions with Italy will continue after the end of my exchange period, as some aspects need to be further analyzed. It is also important to keep in mind that the selection of technologies should be based on the problems encountered in pilot and large-scale tests in the different countries. I would like to thank AGRIS and the TechCare project once again for this great opportunity!”

From left to right: DECANDIA Mauro (AGRIS), FELDMANN Lisa (CNBL), GIOVANETTI Valeria (AGRIS). AGRIS team not present on the picture: ACCIARO Marco, MOLLE Giovanni, CARTA Antonello, PICCONI Stefano, RUIU Ico”.