What is the Blueprint ?
This EU-PLF Blueprint is a manual for farmers, their surrounding industry including high tech Small and Middle-sized Enterprises and other stakeholders.
It is a reference tool offering pragmatic guidance on how Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) systems can be implemented at farm level in order to create value for the farmer and other stakeholders.
Precision Livestock Farming technology offers objective and continuous automated measurements based upon animal indicators or the animal's environment. Beyond the use of Precision Livestock Farming data (e.g. body movements or sounds, etc.) for monitoring and management, the data are translated into key indicators on animal welfare, animal health, productivity and environmental impact.
To analyse how Precision Livestock Farming technologies can create value at farm level by improving animal welfare, health, environmental load and productivity, extensive field tests are carried out by scientific and industrial partners in collaboration with high tech Small and Middle-size Enterprises. Moreover 20 farmers, spread over Europe, have used and experienced the technology and actively given feedback to help us develop this Blueprint.
Highly experienced European teams from different disciplines with a proven track record in animal and Precision Livestock Farming-related fields - animal scientists, veterinarians, ethologists, bio-engineers, engineers, social scientists and economists, leading industrial market players in the livestock industry and high tech Small and Middle-sized Enterprises – have joined our consortium together with 20 farmers to deliver the EU-PLF Blueprint, a useful practical guide.
It allows to:
- explore the diversity of PLF tools in various species (pig, cow, broilers)
- list problems and solutions for implementing PLF tools in a farm
- be introduced to possible business models for PLF tools
Note :
This EU-PLF Blueprint is a result of the EU-PLF project.
To ensure that the EU-PLF Blueprint assists the European farmers and livestock industry beyond the duration of the project, 50 Small and Middle-sized Enterprises or potential starters have been identified all over Europe to play a key role in the EU-PLF project. With a competition for Small and Middle-sized Enterprises and starters, the best ideas got funding to design a PLF-prototype with their high tech innovative solutions. In collaboration with a leading industrial Precision Livestock Farming-partner, they use the EU-PLF Blueprint to bring their prototype to farm level. This allows developing business models and linking high tech Small and Middle-sized Enterprises to European industry players to create new Precision Livestock Farming-products with global impact.
Thank you to all the EU-PLF farmers in whose stables the PLF technology was installed.
Thank you
for your contribution and discussions
for your feedback on the PLF technology
for your testimonies during the EU-PLF workshops
to invite us to your farms; without your input this work was impossible.
