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The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed, is pleased to announce the Department’s involvement in the European Joint Action on Novel technologies, solutions and systems to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of animal production systems. The call recognises that a movement towards greater sustainability of livestock production systems will not only require innovative scientific endeavour but must also incorporate all relevant economic, social and environmental dimensions if meaningful results are to be achieved.

The Joint action has been initiated under the ERA-NETs FACCE ERA-GAS, SusAn and ICT-AGRI 2 and funding is provided by participating member states. In the case of Ireland, funding for these awards is provided by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine’s Competitive Research Programme in partnership with Teagasc’s Walsh Fellowship Programme.

In announcing the awards the Minister said;

Systems of animal production in Europe face significant challenges in curbing GHG emissions while maintaining food security and demand in a changing climate. Today’s research funding announcement will make a significant contribution to strengthening the collaborations of Irish research institutions with their international counterparts and help accelerate Ireland’s efforts in meeting these shared challenges.

The Joint Call places particular emphasis on incorporating innovative livestock management, novel technologies, systems (including Information and communications technology), decision support tools, robotics and intelligent data analyses with the express intent of producing a meaningful impact on GHG emission within a five year timeframe.

In addition, funded projects must address a combination of at least two of the calls specific research themes;

• Theme 1, the “holistic theme”: Agro-ecological approach to whole animal production systems
• Theme 2, the “technical theme”: Technical options for the monitoring and mitigation of GHG emissions from animal production systems
• Theme 3, the “societal theme”: Social and/or economic approach to livestock production and consumption of animal products 

Stressing his on-going commitment to achieving both economic growth and environmental sustainability, in line with the Food Wise strategy, Minister Creed said

This type of research is vital to ensuring the economic, social and environmental sustainability of animal production systems.

Notes for editor

• The Call for Proposals has been launched under the European Research Area Networks FACCE ERA-GAS, SusAn and ICT-AGRI 2. Irish support for the Joint Action is being provided through a combination of DAFM’s Research Stimulus Fund and Teagasc’s Walsh Fellowship Fund however no top-up will be awarded by the European Commission in respect of this call.
• The Research Stimulus Fund (RSF) is one of the Department’s three competitive, research funding programmes and aims to fund research that supports sustainable and competitive agricultural production practices and policies, and contribute to building and maintaining a knowledge economy and research capability in the primary agriculture sector. DAFM allocates some funding from its three competitive research funding programmes to support national participation in strategically aligned transnational competitive research Calls. Such participation helps leverage expertise and data, and develops skills and networks.
• The majority of transnational research funding Calls that DAFM supports are undertaken in conjunction with other EU Member States and the EU Commission. Successful projects that arise following a rigorous peer review evaluation process, are made up of research partners from at least three member states with each partner funded by their national funding organization.
• ERA-GAS is the ERA-NET Cofund for monitoring & mitigation of Greenhouse gases from agri- and silvi-culture. The ERA-GAS Call was an initiative of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI). The aim of ERA-GAS is to strengthen the transnational coordination of research programmes and provide added value to research and innovation on greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation in the European Research Area.
• SusAn is the ERA-NET Cofund for Sustainable Animal Production. The aim of this SusAn Call is to mobilise resources and motivate different actors from the animal production sector to cooperate in transnational research consortia with the objective of developing a more sustainable animal production sector in Europe.

ICT-AGRI 2 is the ERA-NET Cofund for Information and Communication Technology and Robotics for Sustainable Agriculture. The overall goal of ICT-AGRI is to strengthen the European research within the area of precision farming and to develop a common European research agenda concerning ICT and robotics in agriculture. ICT-AGRI develops international research calls to pool fragmented human and financial resources over the boundaries of the participating countries, in order to improve both the efficiency and the effectiveness of Europe’s research efforts