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Four different sector panels (horses, beef cattle, dairy cattle and sheep) devoted primarily to the exchange of experience, knowledge and insights on the most important challenges arising in a given industry, definition and understanding “High quality” by both animal breeders, producers, and consumers, and the collaboration of all stakeholders. Regardless of the industry, the participants of the meetings pointed to the health-promoting aspect of consuming high-quality meat and the need for effective education in this area for consumers from an early age. The necessary condition is special care for maintaining high quality not only in the technological process itself, but at every stage of manufacturing and delivering products to the consumer. Participants of industry meetings emphasized that the main concern and challenge for producers and breeders is animal welfare – proper animal nutrition, grazing, slaughter in pastures, shortened supply chain. It is essential to implement modern technologies such as novel sensors, distant and cloud management, along with Big Data opportunities and blockchain verification.

The Chairman of the Estonian Dairy Cluster Hardi Tamm shared EDCs experience about innovation cooperation within the sector and cross-border as well as introduced EDC success stories such as herd health audit program , express test MAVAS for quick measurement of mastitis pathogens and health data sensor Wisecow.

However, the potential of ICT is not yet fully been utilized due to challenges such as data access, ownership and data interoperability; inadequate skills of different stakeholders issues and lack of suitable ready-made solutions for the end-users hindering the exchange of data along the value chain;

The project SustainIT (Releasing the Potential of ICT for Sustainable Milk and Beef Cattle Value Chains) aims to:

• identify institutional, economic and social barriers for widespread adoption of ICT in relation to animal health and welfare;
• develop conceptual business models and policy recommendations for governance of innovation ecosystems to release the full potential of ICT in dairy and beef value chains.

The project is implemented through the Living Labs established in each participating country, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and germany. The Living Lab approach assumes active involvement of users in each stage of research, development and innovation process. The SustainIT Living Labs will bring together dairy and beef value chain and ICT actors such as farmers, veterinarians, processing industry, retailers, consumers, policy makers, researchers, ICT developers, technology providers and innovation brokers. The multi-actor approach will ensure that the ICT challenges and experience of each stakeholder group are understood and will help to find solutions together that would meet the needs of all value chain stakeholders as well as consumers.

The project SustainIT brings together consortium members with very specific expertise on technology, agri-food value chains, innovation management, governance and policy. With their unique national and transnational networks and knowledge, partners will complement each other expertise and help to explore ICT adoption in transnational context. Consortium members are Estonian Dairy Cluster and Estonian University of Life Sciences​ (Estonia), University of Oulu (Finland), Halmstad University (Sweden) and Technical University of Munich (Germany). ERA-NET Cofund ICT-AGRI-FOOD program project working period is three years and its budget 942 800 euros.

“Digitalization and latter related activities are one of Estonian Dairy Cluster’s (EDC) top priorities. SustainIT fits well with other digitization activities such as establishment of automated solution for collecting bovine health data and mapping of the usage of multilateral data exchange or project beefEST. If we bring along other countries experience and knowledge and sharing our own we can do more” said Chairman of EDC, Hardi Tamm.

More information can be found at project website

Contact: Anne Põder, anne.poder@piimaklaster.ee

The aim of the project is to create a beefEST prototype data management application for beef animal herd farmers. It should combine breeding data and data concerning parentage with daily animal health data, herd and pasture management information. The goal is to create a convenient tool for farmers raising both cross-bred and pure-bred beef animal herds, to ensure the efficient use and collection of both breeding and accounting records, thus contributing to day-to-day livestock management. The system should work on both a computer and as a mobile application, regardless of the operating system.

The adoption of the system will enable improved herd management, and more profitable and environmentally friendly production through the more efficient use of data. The improved use of data is an important prerequisite for the digitalisation of agriculture. In this way, resource use and the ecological footprint are reduced, while efficiency is increased. Each new, functioning modern digital tool indirectly supports the development of unique data exchange solutions.

The beefEST project is being implemented by the Estonian Dairy Cluster, and the Animal Breeders´ Association of Estonia, together with our research partner The Competence Centre on Health Technologies. beefEST’s work will take place from May 2020 through April 2023. beefEST is part of the cross-border EIP cooperation, led by the Estonian Dairy Cluster, with the Finnish EIP working group.

The project’s budget is EUR 427,867.90, of which EUR 347,742.32 is measure support, and EUR 80,125.90 is self-financing by the applicants. The project’s activities are supported within the framework of measure 16.2 of the Estonian Rural Development Plan for 2014–2020