TEAGASC – Agriculture and Food Development Authority

TEAGASC

Teagasc is the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority. Its mission is to support science-based innovation in the agri-food sector and wider bio-economy that will underpin profitability, competitiveness and sustainability. Teagasc is the leading national organisation in the fields of agriculture and food research in Ireland. Teagasc employs circa 1,100 staff throughout Ireland at 52 locations including 6 research centres. The Teagasc mission is to support science-based innovation in the agri-food sector and broader bio economy so as to underpin profitability, competitiveness, and sustainability. It facilitates the exchange of knowledge between farmers, advisors, researchers, educators and industry. Teagasc has access to a large network of farmers, industry and academic partners in Ireland and internationally.

Teagasc is the Irish national body providing extension, advisory and education services to farmers. It has 8 farmer training colleges and local training centres providing education services to farmers and the knowledge transfer advisory programme is delivered by over 250 advisers in 12 Regional Advisory Areas throughout Ireland.

Teagasc has extensive expertise of using a multi-actor approach to demonstration farms as evidenced by, for example, its network of dairy Monitor Farms as part of its collaborative knowledge transfer initiatives with Irish milk processors and its network of Benchmark Farms. It is also ideally placed as a research, advisory and education organisation to understand and articulate the various actors, strategies and tools involved in the operation of effective demonstration farms. Finally, Teagasc has participated in both the AgriDemo and NEFERTITI H2020 projects.

The Grassland Science Research Department, The Livestock Systems Department, The Environment, Soils and Land-Use Department, The Signpost Farms Programme and Teagasc Advisory will all be involved in the project.

WP1: in T1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4. We will contribute to the co-design of the network management and multi-actor rules, knowledge exchange topics and methods, collect baseline data and contribute to the development of the knowledge reservoir.

WP2: in T2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4. We will contribute to the development of the conceptual and methodological framework, definition of metrics and standards, and the evaluation and interconnection of tools.

WP3: leader and T3.1 leader. Contribute to T3.2, 3.3 and 3.4. We will have two complete I3S (dairy and beef). We will manage the demonstration farm network, contribute lead commercial farms, organise demonstration events, organise events associated with the Demonstration Farms and Lead Commercial Farms for the wider community in Ireland. Collect information to examine the impact of the various solutions on the Demonstration and Lead Commercial Farms.

WP4: contribution by providing farm data to upscale from WP3.

WP6: T6.5 leader.