The first Dutch SUPER-G farm network co-innovation workshop took place on May 3rd 2019 with the Cows and Opportunities Farm Network in the Netherlands.
The theme of the workshop was “Carbon sequestration”, as part of a new programme aiming for enhanced carbon sequestration on farm level started in 2019. This program aims to promote experience and learning about the management of soil carbon sequestration will strengthen the farmer’s position for climate-smart production. During the workshop the following questions were addressed to farmers:
- What measures would farmers be willing to implement to address carbon sequestration?
- What measures are feasible for the farmers to implement and focus on?
The answers to the first question were then prioritised by the participants. The results were:
- Animal manure and compost
- Optimized crop management
- Enhanced botanical composition grassland
- An enhanced lifetime of the sward
- More grassland
- More grazing
The answers to the second question are presented below:
- Animal manure and compost: Maximize the use of animal manure and reduce the application of artificial manure as much as possible. Apply compost to the fields and in some cases apply the solid manure instead of slurry.
- Enhance botanical composition: Higher prices for milk produced from species-rich grassland.
- Enhance the lifetime of the sward: Is highly important and very challenging.
- More grassland: Incorporate more grass in their crop rotation.
- More grazing: To enhance the grazing season it is interesting to measure feed uptake. With improved grazing management, field losses in the grasslands can be prevented and make grazing more profitable.
See below some photographs from this day.