Cork awards ceremony for top European grassland farmers
Top European grassland farmers were celebrated last week in Ireland, as part of the Grazing4AgroEcology thematic network project hosted at the Teagasc Animal and Grassland, Research and Innovation Centre in Moorepark, Fermoy, Co. Cork.
The awards ceremony was the conclusion of a two-day 'Young Farmers' tour and project meeting which centred on visiting commercial and research farms across the country.
The Grazing4AgroEcology project has a multi-actor network focused on supporting farmers in optimising grazing for the environment, animals and society, while producing healthy food with less impact on natural resources.
While grazing is generally declining in Europe, Teagasc said that many of the farmers in the project have established suitable avenues to optimise grassland management, and at the same time contributing to ecological diversity and generating a positive image of grassland systems.
The eight award winners were selected from their national award networks. The Irish winners were Patrick and Michelle O’Neill from Co. Longford.
All the award winners had adapted their grassland systems in recent years and winners had positively improved their grassland systems.
The eight national award winners were:
- France: Kevin Helibert - improving grazing infrastructures;
- Germany: Heiko Stelling – moving from zero-grazing to full-day grazing;
- Netherlands: Renshe Weitkamp - Grazing4AgroEcology in practice;
- Romania: Cristian Echim - rotational grazing in an organic system;
- Portugal: Fernando Luis Vasconcelos – using GPS collars;
- Sweden: Anna and Anders Carlsson – managing a well-defined grazing system;
- Ireland: Patrick and Michelle O'Neill - low chemical nitrogen / high clover grazing system;
- Italy: Sabine Widmann - optimising farm management with closed nutrient cycles and direct marketing.
The Grazing4AgroEcolgy thematic project is led by the Gruenlandzentrum Research Centre in Bremen Germany by Dr. Arno Krause.
Prof. Michael O’Donovan, Teagasc Moorepark commented: "This event really shows how innovative and adaptive grassland farmers must be.
"Some of the climatic challenges that they manage through are tough, however all the winners have shown themselves to be excellent grassland farmers, and hugely respected in their countries."
Over 70 young farmers attended the two-day event. Grazing4AgroEcology project researcher with Teagasc, Kieran McCarthy commented: “The interest from the young farmers in Irish gazing systems shows that there are plenty of aspects that Irish and European grassland systems have in common – grazing infrastructure kept coming up as an area to improve on farms."
Sweden and Germany had the largest attendance of young farmers which shows continued interest in grassland systems in those countries.
