Inno4Grass

About the project

Inno4Grass is the acronym for „Shared Innovation Space for Sustainable Productivity of Grasslands in Europe”, an international and multi-actor project gathering prominent farmers‘ organizations, extension services, education and research institutions from eight EU countries – Germany, Belgium, France, Irleand, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden, in which grasslands have a considerable share in the agricultural area and where production of dairy, beef and sheep is of major economic imprortance.

Background

The collaboration between farmers, advisors and scientists is insufficient in the countries concerned. For this reason the latest results of research are not sufficiently put into the practice and valuable knowledge related to grasslands is discovered by practitioners at a very late stage. In addition information about existing novelties introducing at farm level is not disseminated effectively to the public in all Member States.

Our goal

The overall objective of the project is to bridge the gap beteen practice and science communities to ensure the implementation of innovative systems on productive grasslands. The long term goal of the project is to increase profitability of European grassland farms and to preserve environmental values. The scope of Inno4Grass is fully in line with the outcomes of the EIP-AGRI Focus Group „Permanent Grasslands” that identified the need for innovations and the possible contributions of grasslands to economic performance and to sustainability of dairy, beef and sheep production in Europe.

Expected results

The project will significantly contribute to the successful deployment of existing reservoir of scientific and practical knowledge and stimulate its exchange between the regions and countries. This will be achieved through:

• the establishment of Facilitator Agents network capturing novelties form innovative farms scrutinized via 85 case studies, discussing and synthesizing them in electronic farm networks
• the arrangement plenty of meetings, interviews and face-to-face events in all participating countries
• the creation of the project website linked to EIP-AGRI and the involvement of the consortium members at their national contact points
• the prepariation of a large number of dissemination materials (innovation abstracts, video clips, leaflets, syllabus for agricultural students and advisors etc.)
• the implementation of grassland visiting training programs
• the enrichment of national and European Wikimedia and the Encyclopedia Pratensis
• the development of new innovative decission support systems and the demand driven research agenda