Livestock Smart Farming
The main goal is the development of an innovative model of producing, collecting and data processing, to integrate data from activities of several farms involved and to collect data from main livestock production chains in Umbria. The computer platform will work as a data collector from different sources and it will process data to provide breeders with real-time operating lists and indexes on animal welfare, health status, drug management and livestock management, to assess the economic and environmental efficiency of company, the reduction of using drug and the products improvement.
Development and search for new indexes to support the available ones about: animal welfare, animal health, business management, productivity, quality products, economic and environmental aspects. Testing of operating protocols to collect data. Creating new management protocols for different production chains. Implementation and prototyping of new data collection systems in companies that take part in the project. Development of the computer platfom for data collecting and processing. Training of the breeders involved. Dissemination of the results. Creating and testing of a process certification system.
A reduction in the number of breeding farms and an increase in the average number of animals has been in Umbria and in Italy during the last decades. This shows that animal husbandry is developing to a new business model that has to take on new challenges, first of all the conservation of consumers trust, put to the test by negative events (BSE, Dioxin, Residuals, etc.) and by attention to breeding conditions. Animal husbandry is encouraged to adopt more respectful production models for animal welfare. Lack of trasparency about this argument risks to compromise the trust between producers and consumers. New breeding models and operating protocols should be developed to respect animal welfare and they should be connected to divulgation systems, highlighting adopted actions in the main production chians. In addition, animal welfare should be understood in a broader sense, as optimal conditions of livestock management, correct animal nutrition and optimal healthy and productive conditions. Animal welfare becomes an essential element for the production sustainability and, indirectly, for reduction or better usage of veterinary drug. This element, in turn, produces further positive effects on breeding farms (reduction of production costs), on environment (reduction of environmental impact of animal manure) and on public health (reduction of risks of residues in foodstuffs and control of antibiotic resistance).
The development of an innovative model of producing, collecting and data processing on the main livestock production chains in Umbria, to create indexes about animal welfare, environmental impact, productivity and food safety in an Umbria livestock farms sample. In particular: development and research of new indexes to assess animal welfare, management, productivity and environmental impact; trial of operative protocols to improve animal welfare; development of optimal management models on each production chian; collecting data about environmental aspects, property and use of zootecnical waste, management and characteristics of animal feed ration; establishment of knowledge to improve productivity and redditivity of livestock farms; development of technical, economical and environmental indexes to assess business efficiency; development of a computer platfom to manage information from productive processes; identification of methods to enhance zootecnical products. This project is very important to encourage the management improvement and business competitiviness. The possibility of certifying the product, also in terms of productive process to defend animal welfare, to reduce drug use and to guarantee trasparency of productive cycle, can be a tool to support shot-term decisions, but also long-term strategies and to improve the competitiviness of whole production chain.
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Sito web del progetto
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Pagina sul sito PIU Umbria
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