What are the challenges posed by climate change that your consortium's research is responding to?

Juliane Horn: Industrial intensive livestock farming is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and thus to climate change. This is mainly due to the cultivation, fertilisation and global transport of feedstuffs such as grain and soya for the animals kept indoors. Sustainable pasture management can improve the climate balance of livestock farming, because pastures fulfil important functions for the ecosystem: they store carbon, regulate the circulation of matter and water, protect the soil and are habitats for flora and fauna. The more balanced the plant growth in the pasture, the more carbon dioxide is bound from the air in the soil. However, instead of using pastures efficiently and sustainably as a source of fodder for roughage utilisers such as cattle and sheep, today we often mow the various small-scale structures of the pasture dead.

What is the approach your consortium is researching?

Horn: Wherever possible, cattle should go out to pasture and use grassland sustainably as "ecological engineers". For a trend reversal towards more grazing and sustainable grazing systems, however, we need innovative ways to control the grazing of animals. Our research network of practitioners and scientists is particularly concerned with virtual fences as a digital future alternative to costly fencing. For this purpose, the cattle are equipped with a collar that contains, among other things, a GPS antenna. The virtual fences can be placed and moved as desired on the satellite map on the smartphone. In this way, certain parts of the pasture can be temporarily excluded. In this way, a healthy plant growth of the pasture can be achieved for optimal carbon sequestration. Virtual fencing thus makes it possible to design pasture systems that are flexible, site-specific and sustainable. 

Which social factors does it depend on whether this solution works? 

Horn: Efficient, sustainable and animal-friendly pasture management requires a lot of commitment. Digital tools can make a lot of things easier and more efficient, but they are not the solution for everything. Virtual fencing can be a game changer if at the same time environmental services are rewarded, if the economic viability of pasture management is secured and if the legal conditions catch up.

What must be done politically in concrete terms?

Horn: Currently, the discussion about the use of virtual fences is in full swing. The main issues are animal welfare and liability. Electric fences are still considered the gold standard. Yet fence contacts, escapes and even sometimes fatal injuries of farm and wild animals are not uncommon. International studies have so far provided no evidence that virtual fences affect animal welfare. Norway and the UK currently have a market-ready product approved for practical use. EU Member States should follow this example.

How will the results of your research change people's everyday lives?

Horn: There will be differences in milk, for example. In the long term, it is necessary to convert the cow population to robust cattle breeds that are adapted to grazing. Although these breeds individually give less milk than the high-performance cows in the barn, the fat and protein content of the milk is higher, the milk ingredients are of higher quality and the animals are healthier. With rising energy prices, pasture farming can also stabilise prices for milk and beef in the long term, as the costs of feed collection are lower. Digital farming can also bring consumers and farmers closer together. Information tools offer new possibilities for tracing dairy and meat products. In this way, knowledge and appreciation of sustainable pasture farming as an agricultural production method can continue to grow.