The agricultural sector, and animal production, faces challenges in meeting the demand for high quality protein while contributing to the reduction in GHG emissions envisaged in the 2015 Paris Agreement. This transition towards greater sustainability requires all relevant economic, social and environmental dimensions to be taken into account. Using innovative livestock management, novel technologies, solutions and systems including ICT, decision support tools, robotics and intelligent data analyses can help achieve these goals.

We invite proposals from transnational, multidisciplinary research consortia integrating novel technologies, solutions and systems into the animal production sector to mitigate GHG emissions from animal production and/or improve monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of livestock emissions. We call for approaches that consider animal production systems (excluding aquaculture or fur animals) and their management and impacts up- or downstream along the value chain.

The call topics will relate to animal production systems, including feed chain, manure management, nitrogen excretion and integrated approaches to animal production systems with respect to GHG emissions. Proposals including ICT aspects will be strongly preferred. More details on the topics will be available in the Call Announcement.

Proposals (project duration of 24-36 months) should combine different aspects that are relevant to tackle the challenge. An integrated, multidisciplinary research approach should investigate animal production from a systems perspective, and consider the three pillars of sustainability (society, economy and environment). We encourage the use of a multi-actor approach to ensure genuine and sufficient involvement of various actors including farmers, advisors, consumers, private industry, civil society organisations and those involved in governance.

Universities and other higher education institutions, public research institutions, private non-profit organisations, and private companies can apply subject to the national regulations and eligibility criteria. Research consortia should consist of a minimum of three partners seeking funding from at least three participating countries.

Funding of the participating research will be provided by their respective national funding organisation according to their legal terms and conditions for project funding. A provisional list of partner countries is given below – the funding organisations’ names and national regulations will be published with the Call Announcement.

Launch of the call: 8 Oct 2018
Deadline for submission of full proposals: 31 January 2019
Letters to inform applicants on selection result: April 2019
Start of projects: Autumn 2019

Disclaimer: The three ERA-NET consortia will not accept any liability for the content of this pre-announcement, nor for the consequences of any actions taken based on the information provided.