Shared Innovation Space for Sustainable Productivity of Grasslands in Europe Project Acronym: Inno4Grass Project Number: 727368 Deliverable 2.2. ‘Report on case studies for each country, consisting of 10-15 three-page descriptions of each farm and their innovations’ Responsible partners: RHEA (WP leader) and AIA (Task leader) Submission date: 4 February 2019 This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 727368 Inno4Grass Deliverable 2.2 February 2019 Content 1. Introduction 3 2. Methodology 4 3. Results 6 4. Discussion 9 Annexes 10 Annex 1. Overview of the selected case study farms 10 Annex 2. Case study farm descriptions: 85 PDF files 13 2 Inno4Grass Deliverable 2.2 February 2019 1. Introduction Deliverable 2.2 is related with Task 2.3 ‘Creation and monitoring of case studies’ (M6-M22). This Task is lead by AIA in collaboration with GLZ, Teagasc, RHEA, IDELE, APCA, LWK, TRAME, AWE, CAH, SLU, NLTO, CNR, PULS, WIR, SV, LRC, CRAN, CRAPDL, CRACVL & CA Vosges, and under the supervision of RHEA. The objectives and activities of Task 2.3 are described as follows in the I4G project technical annex. ‘The objective of Task 2.3 is to describe the practices and systems of a selected number of the most innovative farms (the case studies), their main innovations (e.g. machines, forage mixtures, forage conservation techniques, product processing, marketing, grazing management systems, legume management, animal type), their implementation, results, constraints and achievements. Case study farmers are mainly selected among innovative farmers interviewed in Task 2.2. They are chosen because they have developed innovative practices and grassland systems. Numbers and types of case study farms per country are presented in Table 1. Table 1. Number of case study farms per country and farm type. Country Farm types Number of case study farms Belgium Dairy, beef 10 France Dairy, beef, sheep 15 Germany Dairy, beef 10 Ireland Dairy, beef 10 Italy Dairy, sheep 10 Poland Dairy 10 Sweden Dairy 10 The Netherlands Dairy 10 Total 85 An agreement will be concluded with these innovative farmers in order to benefit from their contribution as case studies. They will be visited in order to describe adequately innovations. The amount and frequency of these visits depends on individual farmers and their availability in time. It is planned to conduct between 1 and 4 visits per farm and per year.’ The technical annex provided also information on data collection. Task 2.3 endorsed the definition of innovations that was adopted in Task 2.1 with regard to grassland farm management: ‘Innovation in a grassland farm is something original which increases the effectiveness or efficiency of grassland farming management. Innovations are site specific: an innovation in one country can be common practice for years in another one. They can be technical, organizational or at service level.’ 3 Inno4Grass Deliverable 2.2 February 2019 This definition considers that technical and/or organizational innovations can be classified into three categories: • Innovation in production techniques; • Innovation in product; • Innovation in organization (e.g. partnership, value chain). 2. Methodology Each Inno4Grass partner provided a list of farms and innovation topics to be followed in each case study farm to RHEA. Farms were chosen in priority among those described in farm portraits (Task 2.2). RHEA collected this case study list by email exchanges. The list included also the following information: farm name, country, animal type, case study title and innovation type (Annex 1). General guidelines for the follow-up of these case study farms have been progressively defined by AIA and RHEA in a participatory approach with all I4G partners. A long debate took place on the type of data that should be collected and on the opportunity to write a standard methodology for this data collection. These discussions took place during General Assembly meetings. They were initiated in Berlin (Germany, February 2017) but were particularly intense during the Leeuwarden (the Netherlands, October 2017) and Sassari (Italy, March 2018) meetings. These exchanges were prolonged by email and skype conversations in the time intervals between the General Assembly meetings. It was concluded that designing a general methodology was not possible because of a too high diversity of innovation types that is a consequence of the I4G wide definition of innovation. It was the responsibility of partners to define their own methodology and to collect data that they considered relevant for their innovations. Finally, AIA and RHEA synthezised these discussions and sent general guidelines that were still slightly amended after inputs from LRC. The guidelines for case study farms included: • a basic questionnaire on the farm (Excel file); • a more detailed questionnaire (Excel file); • a collaboration agreement; • instructions for the case study description and an example. The basic questionnaire is the one used for farm portraits (Task 2.2) but adapted to Task 2.3. Filling this questionnaire was mandatory. The detailed questionnaire includes similar elements than the basic questionnaire but also many others on a wide range of topics. It aims at completing the basic information. It has been designed by AIA, LRC and RHEA. It was optional. The use of the detailed questionnaire was notably recommended in case of very technical innovations. Very often, because of the very diverse nature of innovations, only a part of the detailed questionnaire is relevant for describing a given innovation. 4 Inno4Grass Deliverable 2.2 February 2019 A collaboration agreement between farmers and I4G partners has been drafted by RHEA. It is a model that should be fulfilled by partners and signed together with farmers. It is partner responsibility to decide on or not to compensate farmers for his/her contribution. The objective of this agreement is to formalize the collaboration for increasing farmers’ commitment in this task. Instructions were provided to partners for helping them to describe case studies by drafting the three- page reports and for harmonizing the lay-out of these descriptions. Instructions recommended adopting a text structure in four titles or topics: 1) Background of the innovation What was the context? What was the problem to solve? What were farmers’ motivations? 2) Detailed description of the innovation What did the farmer do? 3) Results obtained from the innovation What has been improved (workload, profitability, higher production,…) and to what extent? 4) Adoption criteria of the innovation In which context and at which condition the innovation can be adopted by other farmers? During the Paris General Assembly meeting in September 2018, these instructions have been completed at the request of INRA to become “MEAT” compatible. MEAT means: Farmer Motivation, Elements of Context, Farmer Actions, Threats. This has been decided for facilitating ‘cognitive mapping’ for analysing systems of practices (Task 4.2). A fifth topics has then be added to the above list. The structure became: 1) Background of the innovation What was the context? What was the problem to solve? What were farmers’ motivations 2) Detailed description of the innovation What did the farmer do? 3) Results obtained from the innovation What has been improved (workload, profitability, higher production,…) and to what extent? 4) Adoption criteria of the innovation In which context and at which condition the innovation can be adopted by other farmers? 5) Future prospects of the innovation development from the farmer point of view What can still be improved? How can it be disseminated? What are the threats? The lay-out of the three-page reports was also revised at this occasion (October 2018). This last step certainly facilitated and improved the quality of further publication on the IMS and the I4G web site. The follow-up of case studies started in spring 2018. All these methodological tools helped a lot for the achievement of Task 2.3 activities. 5 Inno4Grass Deliverable 2.2 February 2019 3. Results All 85 case studies are now described. They are presented in Tables 2, 3 and 4. Table 2 shows the full list of case studies. Tables 3 and 4 summarize this information by presenting it per country and partner. Table 2. List of case study descriptions performed per country and partner. Country Partner Case study name Belgium AWE Lentz Belgium AWE Theissen Belgium AWE Darchambeau Belgium RHEA Delobel Belgium RHEA Dubois Belgium RHEA Velghe Belgium TR@ME Faux Belgium TR@ME Willem Belgium TR@ME Convié Belgium TR@ME Cossement France APCA/IDELE GAEC a Razon France APCA/IDELE Pixerecourt France APCA/IDELE Didier Creche France APCA/IDELE Emilie Mace France APCA/IDELE De Chenerilles France APCA/IDELE GAEC Charmee France APCA/IDELE GAEC Basse Cour France APCA/IDELE GAEC Tertre Villeray France APCA/IDELE Jean Luc Gaultier France APCA/IDELE CIIRPO France APCA/IDELE GAEC Saulaie France APCA/IDELE GAEC Bourg Abbe France APCA/IDELE GAEC Bos France APCA/IDELE EARL Barreau France APCA/IDELE Stephan Maigrat Germany GLZ Alter Germany GLZ Amos Venema Germany GLZ Bernd Achgelis Germany GLZ von Runnen Germany GLZ Holthusen Germany LWK Bruns Germany LWK Cramer Germany LWK Rothert Germany LWK Stührenberg Germany LWK Wist Ireland TEAGASC Tim Crowley Ireland TEAGASC Michael Doran Ireland TEAGASC John McNamara 6 Inno4Grass Deliverable 2.2 February 2019 Ireland TEAGASC Greenfield Ireland TEAGASC Ger Dineen Ireland TEAGASC