12 July 2024

AgNav sustainability support framework introduces new functionality

Natasha Browne, Siobhán Jordan and Jonathan Herron tell us about the new features of AgNav, a sustainability framework helping farmers develop action plans to achieve climate targets. The tool recently added a new Economic Breeding Index (EBI) forecasting function.

Over 10,000 farmers have now signed up to AgNav, a sustainability support framework, with the majority of these signing up through the Teagasc Signpost Advisory Programme. Of these over 5,000 sustainability action plans have been created for dairy and beef farmers, to aid them with selecting solutions to help reach climate targets. In collaboration with Teagasc, Bord Bia and ICBF, the team have been working on adding a nutrient surplus indicator to AgNav that will support decisions with respect to enhancing on-farm management of water quality and implementing new features within the forecaster. The forecaster is a live decision support tool that allows the farmer to assess the impact of different mitigation strategies on greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions. The forecaster currently includes nitrogen fertiliser, slurry spreading, grazing season, finishing age, and more recently Economic Breeding Index (EBI).

Recent developments

This new EBI forecast function focuses on the effect of EBI on the Methane conversion factor for dairy cattle. The EBI effect of sub-indices (e.g. fertility, milk) will be treated separately. The EBI function accounts for the reduction in the proportion of energy consumed that is lost as methane with the increase in EBI. The new function allows farmers to view the EBI of their herd and compare this to the national average and top 10% in Ireland. The farmer can then use the tool to see the impact of increasing their EBI on their total emissions, emissions per hectare and carbon footprint.

Future developments

Nutrient Surplus

The nutrient surplus indicator is soon to be launched on the AgNav platform. Nutrient surpluses are an indicator of nutrient loss risk to water. This will be used within the recently launched water quality campaign. Nutrient surpluses are associated with greater risk, and can help identify management practices that may improve efficiency and decrease loss risks. Nutrient surpluses are calculated as the differences between nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) imported and exported from a farming system and are expresse3d on a per Hectare basis. On AgNav, users will be able identify the nutrient sources contributing to a given farms nutrient surplus. The user will also be able to assess the effect of measures on nutrient surpluses using the forecaster.

Concentrate

A concentrate function is currently being developed where it will assess the effect of concentrate feed rate, crude protein content of concentrate feed, and using sustainability sourced ingredients on environmental impact of individual farms.

Milk production

A milk production function is also being developed to allow the user to assess the effect of increasing/decreasing milk production and milk composition on the environmental impact of individual farms and associated products.