Resilience For Dairy

R4D will tackle urgent sustai 2021nability challenges faced by dairy producers by bringing together dairy farmers, farmers’ organisations, advisors, researchers and all relevant actors across 15 countries to close the divide between research and innovation within and across Europe. There were around 1.485 million farms at the last official census in 2013 (Eurostat) in the EU bovine dairy sector, yet no network focused solely on their needs has been established to date. Coordinated by Idele (F), R4D is built around the multi-actor approach to implement more intense cooperation between researchers, advisors, farmers and relevant actors to facilitate greater exchange and acceptance of co-created solutions. Following H2020 Eurodairy project, R4D draws on the EU, national and regional connections of the 17 consortium members to appropriate networks, on the three related key themes of economic and social resilience, technical efficiency and environment, animal welfare and society friendly production systems. Using the multi-actor approach, R4D will (i) capture and share innovative ideas and methods from practice across Europe and (ii) identify and conserve research findings that have not yet been widely adopted, enhancing their potential for integration into practice by assessing feasibility at demonstration farms. R4D’s strategic and targeted dissemination and communication actions are designed to raise awareness of the project’s innovation potential, and deliver engagement with farmers, their intermediaries and knowledge providers. Through driving effective cooperation between dairy producers, advisors and researchers, and utilising trusted gatekeepers, R4D will form a transnational ecosystem to stimulate knowledge exchange at international level in order to boost the economic viability and sustainability of the European dairy-producing sector while helping to inform policy of the needs of industry.