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Project Topic
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In the holistic view of agricultural systems policy, incentives should be addressed to those breeding programmes able to improve biodiversity, environmental sustainability, food quality and animal welfare. Agricultural and animal biodiversity play an important role in coping with climate change. They represent essential sources of traits as well as the foundation of more resilient farm ecosystems. Local poultry breeds represent an important heritage and reservoir of biodiversity. New feeding approaches are requested to improve sustainability of animal farm in terms of soybean meal and cereals reduction. The livestock sector represents about 14.5% of all human-induced emissions. It consumes about 6 billion tonnes of feed material in dry matter annually, including one third of global cereal production. Feed production and processing account for the majority of emissions of the sector due to the great amount of resource’s consumption, the vast energy and water consumption of the process, the enormous amount of land-use change and deforestation problems. SUSTAvianFEED aims to demonstrate innovative poultry farming systems by the inclusion of sustainable animal feeding. A sustainable nutritional formula for poultry farming in which insects will play a key role will be developed. Thus, the sustainability of poultry feeding will be the mainstream of the development of an innovative and sustainable livestock farming system. The sustainable nutritional formula for poultry farming will be developed through the use of insects and the substitution of environmentally damaging protein sources (as soybean or fishmeal) by regional agri-food sector by-products in order to follow circular economy principles. SUSTAvianFEED approach will also promote local economy, socioeconomic growth and local resilience of Mediterranean areas. The selection of local an adapted species, particularly important for small-scale farming, associated with poor and marginalized sectors, will provide subsidiary incomes as well as nutritious meat and eggs, promoting the commercialization of local products and maximizing the incomes. The project will demonstrate the concept in four different pilot areas be developed in Spain, Italy, Tunisia and Turkey. Furthermore, the project aims to contribute towards the transition to a more sustainable farming system by the implementation of circular economy approaches, as the involvement of smallholders, consumers, and other relevant actors or promotion of local agriculture and livestock farming. In addition, the inclusion of native and local species, adapted to each ecosystem, will significantly contribute to the reduction resources consumption regarding basic needs as energy or water consumption. SUSTAvianFEED considers as a crucial aspect of the project its social impacts, so it will promote gender equality and women empowerment in pilot activities, in order to develop sustainable business models for women socioeconomic growth. The project will develop a multi-actor approach, so relevant actors of the whole value chain are involved. By implementing Living Labs activities, each pilot area will engage the relevant partners of the different stages along the whole supply chain so a co- creation process is followed. Farmers, consumers, feeding manufacturing companies and policy makers among others will be part of the process and synergies will be created. Furthermore, SUSTAvianFEED will facilitate the replication of project activities through dissemination and exploitation activities, especially focused on the private sector. Results will be presented at workshops, conferences and other events during the project implementation to all relevant actors.
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