Latest Projects

Research project (§ 26 & § 27)
Duration : 2024-01-01 - 2026-12-31

The proposed project "Initiative of Fostering cross-border knowledge exchange and co-creation on sustainable soil and farm management (Soil-X-Change)" will help to connect farmers, actors, policy makers, projects, and initiatives to speed up innovation and promote faster, wider co-creation and transposition of innovative solutions into practice. It will contribute to effective AKIS by intensifying thematic cooperation between researchers, farmers, and other stakeholders in the EU. Soil-X-Change will also contribute to the green transition, smart agriculture, climate-neutrality, and sustainability areas, as well as enhancing and exchanging the knowledge of the main actors. Soil-X-Change, initiated by EIP-AGRI Operational Group practitioners (OGs), reflects the needs of 151 direct partners. It will collect, combine, harmonise, analyse and integrate the results and data product developed by the different EIP-AGRI OGs and the project partners. Soil-X-Change will disseminate and share innovative practices across 9 member countries. Furthermore, the Soil-X-Change project will bring together EIP OGs and key stakeholders working on sustainable soil and farm management to create an EU-wide network, share knowledge, and introduce ready-to-use practices that will enable farmers to make the right decisions related to agricultural production practices. At the end of the project the extended knowledge and innovative ideas of member and non-member OGs will widen the scope of their activities and showcasing their result to an increased number of stakeholders and farmers in an international environment and network across EU countries. Soil-X-Change will use a bottom-up approach (farmers to OGs) and will reinforce and share practical knowledge using the main dissemination channels suitable for farmers and practitioners.
Research project (§ 26 & § 27)
Duration : 2023-09-01 - 2024-06-30

The aim of the study is to identify those biogas plants that could use regionally available biogenic residues and waste materials and where biomethane production would be possible at the same time due to their proximity to the gas grid. Based on three to four model regions in Austria, the biogas plant data will be collected and the available and realisable potentials of biogenic residues and waste materials will be determined on the municipal as well as on the site level. Furthermore, a survey will be conducted for the use as biomethane and a possible gas feed-in. The concept is to be developed in such a way that it can be transferred to all Austrian regions. A graphical model is to be developed with the geo-information software QGIS, which will provide a visual representation of the biogas plants in question and can also be transferred to other regions.
Research project (§ 26 & § 27)
Duration : 2024-02-01 - 2026-07-31

The Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy highlighted the relevance of higher animal welfare standards in future EU agricultural policy. One of the foreseen activities is to link the CAP financial support to Member States (MSs) with welfare indicators; however currently there are no simple, reliable indicators of welfare that can be easily collected across the EU to identify farms at risk of poor welfare. Mortality has been suggested as a possible indicator but used alone it is not a sufficiently sensitive welfare proxy. EFSA has developed a risk-based model for the farm-level assessment of dairy cow welfare which considers additional variables alongside mortality. This model has the potential to be used for EU dairy welfare monitoring, but it requires testing with data from commercial herds prior to application. This project aims to carry out data collection activities in the field of dairy cow welfare on-farm based on the risk-based model developed by EFSA. The ultimate goal is to test (and if needed, optimise) the risk-based model to provide a basis for future monitoring dairy cow welfare in the EU.

Supervised Theses and Dissertations