Precision Solutions in Livestock Farming - Feasibility and applicability of digital data collection

Food production systems face many challenges nowadays. Concerns regarding the environmental impact of increasingly intensive production, the rising cost of inputs needed to achieve adequate yields and the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have put, and continuously put the agricultural sector in a difficult position regarding its sustainability, since even customers became conscious about them. Such external factors have affected both the animal production and the crop farming, inducing fundamental changes in these sectors, leading towards smart agriculture. Technology solutions have been increasingly experimented with and deployed to counterbalance the above. Currently, precision farming, and the use of so-called precision livestock technologies in large-scale livestock systems offer tangible, yet costly implementations to monitor and optimize yields. While pilot studies and prototypes have been widely demonstrated in the past 10 years, standard, scalable Internet of Things (IoT) based implementations are still lacking, mostly due to the complexity of the technology application. Many factors should be considered from communication protocol to protection against weather conditions to ensure that the employed IT solution can really add value to the livestock farmer at the end of the production cycle. This scoping review is focusing on the current good practices and challenges of the domain, and on appropriate data collection. Theoretical and practical factors that determine the quality of data collection and pre-processing are presented in this article, aiming to pave the road for future scalable precision livestock IoT implementation. © 2022 IEEE.

Pandemic Food. Rethinking agri-food after COVID-19

The relationship between unsustainable agri-food practices and the spread of foodrelated diseases has been confirmed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Current agri-food systems are not able to respond to global population growth, migration, and urbanization, nor to hunger caused by climate change and by insecurity in conflict zones. Increased food production, intensive farming, long supply chains and consumer demand – particularly for animal products – pose risks not only to human health, but also to biodiversity and the climate. Some commonalities in the history of pandemics oblige us to reflect and rethink food production and processing in a more sustainable and holistic way, as proposed in the EU Farm to Fork Strategy. © 2021 Author(s).

Assessing Environmental Factors within the One Health Approach.

Background: One Health is a comprehensive and multisectoral approach to assess and examine the health of animals, humans and the environment. However, while the One Health approach gains increasing momentum, its practical application meets hindrances. This paper investigates the environmental pillar of the One Health approach, using two case studies to highlight the integration of environmental considerations. The first case study pertains to the Danish monitoring and surveillance programme for antimicrobial resistance, DANMAP. The second case illustrates the occurrence of aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) in milk in dairy-producing ruminants in Italian regions. Method: A scientific literature search was conducted in PubMed and Web of Science to locate articles informing the two cases. Grey literature was gathered to describe the cases as well as their contexts. Results: 19 articles and 10 reports were reviewed and informed the two cases. The cases show how the environmental component influences the apparent impacts for human and animal health. The DANMAP highlights the two approaches One Health and farm to fork. The literature provides information on the comprehensiveness of the DANMAP, but highlights some shortcomings in terms of environmental considerations. The AFM1 case, the milk metabolite of the carcinogenic mycotoxin aflatoxin B1, shows that dairy products are heavily impacted by changes of the climate as well as by economic drivers. Conclusions: The two cases show that environmental conditions directly influence the onset and diffusion of hazardous factors. Climate change, treatment of soils, water and standards in slaughterhouses as well as farms can have a great impact on the health of animals, humans and the environment. Hence, it is important to include environmental considerations, for example, via engaging environmental experts and sharing data. Further case studies will help to better define the roles of environment in One Health scenarios.

Towards Post-Pandemic Sustainable and Ethical Food Systems.

The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures. Re-orientation is also needed by the relevant sciences, traditionally siloed in their disciplines and without adequate attention paid to how the food system problem is variously framed by diverse stakeholders according to their values. From the transdisciplinary perspective of food ethics, we argue that a post-pandemic scheme focused on bottom-up, regional, cross-sectoral and non-partisan deliberation may provide the re-orientation and benchmarks needed for not only more sustainable, but also more ethical food futures.