LivestockSense

University of Aarhus and Innvite are partners in the EU-funded project LivestockSense, which focus on improving sustainability in animal agriculture.

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LivestockSense focuses on the pig and poultry sector across seven countries

There are a total of 9 partners in LivestockSense.

Dr. Ildiko Edit Tikász from AKI – Institute of Agricultural Economics (Hungary) and Thomas Bjerre from Innvite presenting results from LivestockSense in Aachen, Germany, October 2022.

LivestockSense received a grant from ICT-AGRI-FOOD in March 2021 and will run until April 2023.

LivestockSense is an ambitious EU-funded project with partners from a total of seven countries: Hungary, Estonia, Israel, Austria, Poland, Sweden, and Denmark. The project is supported through the EU program ICT-AGRI-FOOD, which in Denmark is administrated by the Green Development and Demonstration Programme, GUDP.

The main objectives of the LivestockSense:

Improve the economic and environmental viability of livestock farms through the application of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT)
Identify/remove social barriers to technology adoption to achieve a wider use of ICT in agriculture

During the project, LivestockSense has selected and supplied a number of farms in five key geographical areas in Europe Europe with Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) tools. Both qualitative and quantitative surveys will be used to understand farmers’ attitudes toward PLF tools to identify barriers to the limited adoption of ICT-based technologies.

LivestockSense has also involved other actors in the value chain, such as technology developers and policymakers to explore attitudes towards the PLF and understand the future expectations of the livestock sectors. Recommendations are prepared on how to remove or reduce the impact of those barriers. The likely economic and environmental benefits associated with technology adoption will also be incorporated into a learning database and associated website using AI-based technologies and ICT tools for decision support.

A number of European innovation hubs and leading knowledge institutions within animal agriculture are participating across national borders involving a total of 9 different partners in LivestockSense.

Selected results in LivestockSense:

So far, the extent and the effect of automation and intelligent technologies used today within European livestock farming have been insufficiently elucidated. LivestockSense has collected data to map the scope and is processing data to provide a better insight into the use of smart technologies in European livestock farming today. In 2022, quantitative as well as qualitative surveys of 145 poultry farms and 121 pig farms have been carried out. The study is transnational with participation from Denmark, Hungary, Sweden, Estonia, Poland and Israel. From the Danish side, there are 29 poultry producers and 28 pig producers who have their production in Denmark. All Danish interviews were conducted by Aarhus University, while Innvite ApS contributed to the transnational work with the collected data.
As a first step towards implementation and commercialisation, a number of livestock farms in different countries have been selected (study farms). The concrete ICT technologies for live demonstrations at selected European pig and poultry farms are physically in place in all countries.
The first statistical models for measuring the use of ICT solutions in farms have been developed in LivestockSense.

The Project Portal

The project portal for LivestockSense is continuously updated by Innvite ApS. The main language of the portal is English with tabs in Danish and the other national languages on the front page.

Results from the quantitative interviews are published on the portal and divided into the poultry sector and the pig sector.