Stakeholders activities

by C. Mosconi

In 2021, the dissemination activities for stakeholders will be focused on the ten National Round Tables to be organized in the second part of the year and on the ICAR Annual Conference to be held in Leeuwarden (26-30 April).

The ten national round tables (NRT)

In the second part of 2021 until the first months of 2022 National Round Tables (NRT) will be managed in ten SMARTER countries with the purpose to reach all relevant stakeholders within each country (end-users, sheep and goat farmers, breeding, (inter)-professional organizations, training people, wide society) to the same table for presenting and discussing the achievements of the Project

The structure of each NRT is common and can be summarized as it follows:

• Agenda
• Presentation of the Organizations of the participants
• Presentation of the WP practical results, through slides prepared by of the different WPs leaders translated into the local language
• Flexible presentation according to the specific interest of each countries (traits-oriented, evaluation–oriented, breeding objective-oriented). The aim being to present and discuss objectives, practical results for end-users, way of disseminate.
• Survey (from WP7) for getting feedbacks from the participants, in order to improve the replies of the different questionnaires set up during the project.

All the collected feedbacks, ideas, suggestions in the various NRT will be collated into a final document that facilitate the application of the achievements of the SMARTER. A sufficient time for discussion and round tables besides the plenary presentations is a key point to provide the right communication to the participating stakeholders. Interviews of farmers, end-users on their perception of the project should be welcome.

ICAR Annual Conference, April 2021

In Leeuwarden (the Netherlands), a specific session dedicated to SMARTER will debate the latest achievements on “Resilience and Efficiency in Small Ruminants”. Around 200 experts are expected in the Conference while more than 200 participants will join the meeting on remote. In order to facilitate the assistance, form the Americas, the Conference will be organized from h. 19.00 on. The timing has been identified also for helping a wider involvement from Asia and Oceania.

In general, the conference is dedicated to circular farming and its impact on animal genetics, recording of data and cattle / herd management.

Some interesting ICAR sessions are scheduled, involving the impact of circular farming on breeding and breeding goals, the recent developments in animal identification, data analytics, new opportunities through milk analysis, new developments in milk recording, possible applications of blockchain in recording activities, on goat and sheep performance recording and on their resilience.

Due to the target of the participants, a session of the Annual Conference is dedicated to the SMARTER Project and six manuscripts heave been already submitted.