20 NI farmers visit The Netherlands to explore innovations
The College of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) has led a farm innovation visit of 20 Northern Irish farmers to The Netherlands, in an effort to learn about the innovations being implemented on farms there in a bid to reduce ammonia emissions.
The visit comes after the Department of Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Affairs (DAERA) published its 'Environmental Improvement Plan', which sought to develop an ammonia strategy to deliver reductions in emissions from agriculture in Northern Ireland.
According to Judith McCord, senior air quality technologist with CAFRE, this visit to the Netherlands represented an 'ideal opportunity' to learn about cutting-edge research on ammonia reduction, the adoption of these technologies on farms, and to facilitate knowledge transfer on the topic to the 20 Northern Irish farmers in attendance.
Dutch innovation
The first day included a visit to Wageningen Dairy Research Centre at Leeuwarden, looking at the continuing research being carried out there on ammonia emissions, the measurement of ammonia emissions, and the direction of future research.
Later that day, the group visited Marijin Van Art, a farmer within the Dutch 'Network of Practical Farms', who is monitoring the impact of emissions, based on changes in farm management.
The 'Network of Practical Farms' was developed and run by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality as part of its climate policy, according to McCord.
Frank Verhoeven, director of Boerenverstand, an independent consultancy firm for regenerative farming, addressed the group that evening on the role of data and how, by using a nutrient cycling assessment tool called the Kringloopwizzer, farmers can measure sustainability across a wide range of metrics in assessing farm emissions.
On the second day, the group visited two Lely factories at Lely headquarters in Maassluis.
Here, discussions centred on how technology has developed over the years and where the future of technology and innovation lies in meeting sustainability targets.
The final visit was hosted by Farm Nescio, who McCord said was the first farm to have a milking robot installed in 1992 and has since further retrofitted technology to advance their sustainable enterprise.
McCord stated that this was an 'ideal' farm to look at how retrofitting innovative technology has improved production efficiency and helped to chieve the Dutch legislative targets for emission reductions.
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