The overall objective of Re-Livestock is to evaluate and mobilize the adoption of innovative practices applied cross-scale (animal, herd, farm, sector and region) to reduce GHG emissions from livestock farming systems and increase their capacity to dealing with potential climate change impacts. To reach our aim, Re-Livestock have brought together the excellence scientific expertise in Europe and Australia and across disciplines, including co-innovation, animal feeding, breeding, welfare, farm management, environmental and socio-economic assessment and policy analysis, to develop novel and scientifically supported integrated approaches specific for different dairy, beef and pig systems and geographic regions in the context of climate change. Strong collaboration with industry stakeholders to identify the innovations and to co-design the validation will ensure relevance and maximise the adoption of best practices. National groups of farmers (case studies) and ‘stakeholder forums’ together with a ‘European multi-actor platform’ will allow for an engaged co-design of transition pathways whilst ‘learning from innovation networks’ will allow for the testing and sharing of latest innovative solutions. A ‘community of practice’ will extend the multi-actor approach to a broad range of stakeholders.
The overall objective of Re-Livestock is to understand and mobilize adoption of innovative practices, applied cross-scale (animal, herd/farm, sector and region), to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of livestock farming and to increase their capacity to deal with climate change impacts, in order to ultimately increase the overall resilience of the livestock sector. To reach this aim, the consortium has brought together scientific excellence and technical expertise, from across Europe disciplines, to develop novel and scientifically supported integrated approaches targeted to different livestock systems and geographic regions in the context of climate change. Strong collaboration with industry stakeholders and partners to identify the innovations and to co-design their validation will ensure relevance and will maximise the adoption of best practices. National case studies and stakeholders’ forums, together with a European multi-actor platform, will allow for an engaged co-design of transition pathways by using unique food system models, whilst innovative experimental work will allow for the testing and sharing of latest innovative solutions. An ambitious communication strategy will extend the multi-actor approach to a broad range of stakeholders to create a community of practice.
PIK will in particular contribute by defining a current and possible future baseline for circular livestock systems in the EU by setting up the linkage between the CiFOS and LPJmL models and creating the data required to develop a base run for the current situation, as well as the available biomass for different representative concentration pathways based on the latest generation of global and regional climate models (CMIP6/CORDEX). It will explore ways of redesigning the livestock sector for each RCP given levels of biomass (creating RCP baselines) without accounting for specific mitigation or adaptation practices and investigate how mitigation and adaptation practices can improve the resilience of the circular livestock production systems within the EU. Additionally, PIK will evaluate how the resilience of the EU livestock sector is affected by the impact of global trade flows under different climate scenarios and management options.
