Better-Calf

Dairy Calf Systems for Resilience, Welfare, and Sustainability in Rural Territories

Small scale farming plays a key role in employment and land use in rural areas in Nort-West Europe, and faces several challenges: economic (low farm incomes, market volatility), environmental (biodiversity decline, greenhouse gas emissions, climate stresses), and societal (e.g. perceptions of animal welfare).

In some of these regions, up to 50% of farmers do not have successors when they retire. This is particularly the case for small and medium sized livestock farms with many of these farms subsequently integrated into larger-scale farm systems.

Aims

Better-Calf aims, through a combination of experimental farm studies, farm systems simulation, farmer focus groups and multi-stakeholder groups, to design, test and deploy innovations in grass-based dairy-beef systems.

The project brings together partners from six European countries where dairy-beef systems are at different stages of development (Ireland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland) to develop and test dairy-beef systems under a range of conditions.

Objectives

Support the resilience of rural areas in Nort-West Europe and the livelihoods of family farms by developing grass-based dairy calf systems. These systems will be designed to have low environmental impact, low competition between human food and animal feed and improved animal welfare.

Visit the Better-Calf website to learn more