Within the frames of the two-year SYNECO project that is coordinated by the Farmers Central Cooperative Society Ltd (FCCS) and co-funded by EU, ORGANE shall provide expertise to enhance the recycling of manure nutrients to the benefit of environment, nature and climate, as well as to reduce costs for and dependency on mineral fertilisers. 
 
Malta is with an area of 316 km² one of the smallest EU Member States, but has with about 465,000 inhabitants in the same time one of highest population densities in the World. Malta consists of the main Malta island, the smaller Gozo island plus a number of other islands. Its agriculture is dominated by small fields, where mediterranean crops like olives, grapes and vegetables plays a large role. There is about 152 pig farms with 77,000 pigs and about 394 cattle farms with 19,500 heads, 40 per cent of which are dairy cattle. Malta is self-sufficient in the production of most vegetables, milk and eggs but partially depends on imports when it comes to meat, wine and potatoes. Current manure management practices are costly and not sustainable. It is for instance a common practice to clean stables with water and lead the effluents to municipal wastewater treatment plants.    

A newsletter of August 2021 from the National Rural Network Managing Authority of the Government of Malta explains in more details about the SYNECO project as well as related activities in Malta. 
 
ORGANE's role is to work for a higher NPC recycling in Malta farming, based on the manure processing that SYNECO establish. This includes identification and demonstration of methods for Malta crop and vegetable farmers' optimal use of these end and byproducts. SYNECO has direct participation of livestock farms and will to a large extent work with activities that engage members of the FCCS, such as field trials, demonstrations and trainings. ORGANE will for this employ CropManager for online Integrated Nutrient Management at farms. The online tool is currenlty being revised, among other to enable its use under farming conditions with several crop rotations per year. ORGANE will also use the scientific knowledge to manure processing and its end and byproducts that is held in AgroTechnologyATLAS, and extent it with relevant information from the SYNECO project.

SYNECO has by the European Network for Rural Development (ENRD) been displayed at their webpage as a best practice project - see https://enrd.ec.europa.eu/projects-practice/syneco-recovering-value-pig-and-cow-slurry-promote-environmental-synergies_en

Find more information at the project web page https://synecomalta.com/.

EIP-AGRI has selected ORGANE, represented by Henning Lyngsø FOGED to become member of a Focus Group on "Digital tools for sustainable nutrient management", which will start its work in March 2022. The relevance of this Focus Group is especially related to ORGANE's current involvement in the SYNECO project in Malta combined with the fact that ORGANE offers CropManager for Integrated Nutrient Management, which is being updated parallel with the SYNECO project implementation, giving the opportunity to adapt it to Malta context. CropManager is aiming at being a management tool for crop farmers' nutrient management, and in the same time a tool for making users able to comply with regulations, including delivering required documentation to the authorities. The main challenges faced during the last 14 years working with implementation of CropManager in countries like Latvia and Lithuania, has been to link CropManager with the public registers. We have been met with the attitude that the public registers do not see it as their role to make their collected data inter-operational or re-useable, which makes it hard for us as service provider to deliver the quality services we would like to the crop farmers. ORGANE will work for establishing of standards, protocols and best practices for sharing data between public registers and nutrient management tool service providers, completely in line with the intentions of the Farm-to-Fork startegy that will introduce the use of Integrated Nutrient Management (INM), a.o. building on principles behind a FaST tool under development.

Click here to read more about the Focus Group

Introduction

Precision Mineral Supplementation is Use Case 2.6 of the Internet of Food and Farming 2020 (IoF2020) project. IoF2020 has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 731884.

IoF2020 is dedicated to make precision farming a reality by promoting data-driven technology, that can improve the comptetitiveness and sustainability of food and farming. IoF2020 is designed to generate maximum impact right from the outset and in the long-run, bringing closer together and integrating the supply and demand sides of IoT technologies in the agri‐food sector. Read more at the IoF2020 webpage - www.iof2020.eu.

Pitstop^PLUS

The idea of precision mineral supplementation of dairy cows is completely novel and unique, and no other technology similar to Pitstop^PLUS is found. The use of electronic ear tags for dairy farm management purposes is spreading, and Pitstop^PLUS uses the open standards HDX or FDX for electronic ear tagging based on ISO standard 11784 and 11785 according test methods given by point 7 in ISO standard 24631-1. Furthermore, Pitstop^PLUS uses LoRa wireless networks for communication between the feeders and the master unit, and a management and supervision interface, Pitstop^PLUS Manager, happen e.g. on basis of WiFi connected mobile phones, and cloud-based data storages with synchronisation with Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) data. The whole systems shall work in an environment with high variations in temperatures in a dusty, humid atmosphere with high concentrations of ammonia and other aggressive gases.

The Use Case activities are designed to mature Pitstop^PLUS for exploiting its advanced features as well as its synergies with the existing UC2.3 HERDSMAN+. Establishing test beds in three different regions ensures a range of location-sensitive issues to be clarified, given their diversity in pre-conditions for use of IoT based farming systems. The central goal is to showcase and optimise the Pitstop^PLUS system for commercial use in these three countries / regions to pave the way for access to markets worldwide, or in specific at the main target markets that are specified in our Feasibility Study, whereof Germany potential is one of the largest key markets.

Some facts

The Use Case project runs for two years in 2019 and 2020. Organe Institute ApS is coordinator of the Use Case with Zemnieku Saeima, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences and Lehr- und Versuchszentrum Futterkamp under Landwirtschaftskammer Schleswig-Holstein as partners.

The Use Case is implemented in close contact with stakeholders, first of all the six dairy farms, where Pitstop^PLUS is demonstrated and trialed, but as well mineral feed suppliers, farm advisory organisations, research, dairies, representatives of IACS registers holding information about dairy cows, and consumers. A central stakeholder is MicroFeeder, which is the company that develops the Pitstop^PLUS technology and will market it in the future.

Information about Use Case activities will be availble from the Pitstop^PLUS webpage as well as from https://www.iof2020.eu/trials/dairy/precision-mineral-feeding and social media.

Introduction

SuMaNu, which is an abbreviation for the Interreg-Baltic co-funded platform project "Sustainable manure and nutrient management for reduction of nutrient loss in the Baltic Sea Region", has started with participation of Organe Institute.

Interreg-Baltic has supported SuMaNu as well as five other platform projects, which all aims to follow-up on earlier projects in their repective priority area in order to strengthen project impacts and sustainability of project results, in particular by better linking of project results with policies.

The aim of the SuMaNu project platform is to enhance the capacity of authorities, policy makers, farmers and advisors to use and govern the use of nutrients, especially from manure, in a sustainable way and to reduce nutrient leaching. The project also aims to enhance the capacity of the target groups to understand the concept of nutrient recycling. This will be done by summarizing the project results to sciencebased recommendations that will be created in close cooperation with the target groups and communicated via the wide networks of the partnership.

Get a short project presentation sheet here: 

Some facts

The project runs until March 2021, it is led by Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), has a budget of app. € 1 million and has 9 partners.

You find some additional project facts here: 

Our role

The SuMaNu project, being highly related to policies in the area of nutrient management in farming, including manure management, fits highly the competences of Organe Institute, who participates broadly in the project activities. In specific, Organe Institute will clarify key messages and recommendations of earlier projects, and evaluate the degree of their implementation and reasons for that in the different Baltic Sea Region countries.

Organe Institute's participation in SuMaNu has its basis in our role as work package leader in 'Baltic Slurry Acidification', and Director of Organe Institute, Henning L. Foged, has also been work package leader in the earlier strategic project BalticCOMPASS, been involved in BalticManure, and had a close cooperation with BalticDEAL.

The photo is from BalticCOMPASS, which recommended a wider use of slurry separation, and therefore supported a cooperative of pig-farmers at Bornholm to establish a mobile slurry separation unit.

Introduction

Baltic Slurry Acidification promotes the implementation of slurry acidification techniques (SAT's) in the region and mitigates thus airborne eutrophication of the Baltic Sea waters and hazardous aerosol formation in the Baltic Sea Region. Livestock manure is the main source of ammonia-nitrogen emissions in the region and, through atmospheric deposition, these emissions account for a significant amount of nitrogen entering the waters. Ammonia emissions also threaten human health through the formation of particulate aerosols, which as a pollutant is estimated to have a very high negative impact on human health. Slurry acidification techniques (SATs) can be used to reduce ammonia losses from livestock manure in livestock housing, manure storages and from the fields during the application of manure. Several pilot SAT installations and field trials around the Baltic Sea region will provide concrete experiences that will be disseminated to stakeholders via field walks, demonstrations and other activities. The project will further clarify technological aspects of SATs, analyze the environmental and economic implications, conduct market analysis and suggest policy recommendations that could help dissemination of SAT technology in the Baltic Sea region.

Some facts

Baltic Slurry Acidification started in March 2016 and lasts three years, until March 2019.

Baltic Slurry Acidification has status as a flagship project, meaning that it has an acknolwledged role in the implementation of EU's strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. Our monogram for the project signals the connection to livestock production.

Get a short project presentation sheet here: 

Read more at the project web site at http://www.balticslurry.eu and follow us at Facebook.

Our role

Organe Institute ApS leads WP6 about policies and market analyses. WP6 will do country specific analyses of related policies, legislation, framework conditions and market potentials and will thus clarify the potential for use of Slurry Acidification Technologies (SATs) in the individual Baltic Sea Region (BSR) countries. Danish policies, legislation and support schemes will be a baseline for policies, legislation and support schemes in other project countries, and potential enablers and barriers for the disseminated use of SATs in the Baltic Sea Region countries will be identified. The activities will include investigation of possible work safety related provisions associated with SATs, and exchange of Danish ways to take ' necessary precautions. Market analyses will especially focus on the farming structure and practices that are favouring the use of SATs, such as slurry’s share of produced livestock manure.

The work from WP 2 (Technical Feasibility Studies), WP 3 (Pilot Installations and Demonstrations), WP 4 (Field Trials), and analyses from WP 5 (Environmental and Economic Implications) will support the studies in WP 6. On basis of that, policy recommendations will be formulated and they will provide the foundation for a qualified dialogue with target groups, including authorities, farmers organisations, research, farm advisory services, business and policy makers in the BSR countries concerning the potentials of SATs as  instruments for reach of national targets for air and water quality as well as for the economic development of the livestock production.

Roundtables geared towards the target groups will be aimed to stimulate cross-sector and policy oriented dialogue, and to rise the capacity to develop national legislation and support schemes for SATs. Dissemination and communication activities will also comprise articles for the project website and various media, newsletters and presentations at international conferences.

Specific objectives include activities like:

• Country-wise policy recommendations and guidelines
• Roundtable meetings

Organe Institute has assisted MicroFeeder to receive funding from the SME Instrument udner EU's Horizon2020 programme for carrying out a Phase 1 Feasibility Study.

Only about 5% of the very best written proposals based on convincing business cases are seleected for funding under the SME Instrument.

Pitstop PLUS is a market disrupting invention that results from rethinking the way dairy cows should be supplemented in the context of increased use of TMR along with increasing productivity.

Click here to read more about Pitstop^PLUS