D4.1: Online Knowledge Platform

The OK-Net Arable project has launched a platform aimed at filling the gap in the exchange of information between farmers across Europe. Farmers’ needs were taken into account at every stage of development in order to make it easy for them to use. The platform is available in 10 languages (English, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Latvian) and the solutions are divided according to the most relevant topics in organic arable farming: Soil quality and fertility, nutrient management, pest and disease control, weed management and solutions for specific crops. Not only can farmers and advisors find solutions and engage with each other, they can also propose solutions. The intention is that this will help fill the current gap in the exchange of farmers’ knowledge

Organic Eprints – helping research results go to work

Research results regarding organic food and farming from Europe have become easily accessible – and so can results from the rest of the world. The Open Access archive Organic Eprints (www.orgprints.org) has developed since the start in 2002 so that it now includes more than 14,000 items, has 27,000 registered users and more than 200,000 visits per month. The archive is open for all to use and registered users can deposit their research publications from refereed journals as well as non-refereed sources. Organisations, research facilities, research programmes and projects are also presented in the archive. Organic Eprints is the largest database in the world with publications about Organic Agriculture & Food Systems research. It can be utilized for entering papers for conferences as seen for the Organic World Congress 2014 and 2008

User guide for Organic Eprints in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech and Turkish

This user guide (or "screenshot manual") is a collection of screenshots from Organic Eprints at www.orgprints.org with instructions on how to use the archive. The guide shows how to register, browse, search, save searches and deposit documents by showing screenshots with short, instructive comments. The user guide has been translated into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech and Turkish, and these language versions are also available here. (The orgprints.org site is available in English and German.) We encourage translations of this user guide into additional languages. For those who wish to do so, the source file (Word) is also made avaialable here. Please contact the authors, or ICROFS (www.icrofs.org), if you wish to translate the user guide

Feasibility study for organic farming

Even though the ethos of organic agriculture concerns animal welfare and environmentally friendly production, certain undesirable inputs are permitted in organic farming by the European Commission Regulation (EC) No 889/2008. The EU Horizon 2020 project Organic-PLUS (https://organic-plus.net) has investigated the possibility to phase out a range of contentious inputs: Plant inputs: Copper, sulphur, and mineral oils; Soil inputs: Conventional manure, plastic, and peat; Livestock inputs: conventional straw, antibiotic medicine, and anthelmintic medicine (against parasites). Organic-PLUS has performed a feasibility study to investigate advantages and disadvantages of both the current production methods with the contentious inputs and proposed alternative methods where the- inputs have been phased out or substituted. The feasibility, sustainability and environmental impact have been evaluated involving stakeholders and decision-makers (e.g., farmers, advisers, developers). In this multi-actor approach seven case farms in Denmark (Northern Europe), Germany (Central Europe) and Spain (Southern Europe) were selected, including the following organic production branches: Pig, poultry, vegetables, cereals, potato, apple, and wine. Results of the case farm studies include: · It is feasible to replace plastic folio for weed control with alternative products (bioplastic or paper mulching) · It is feasible to replace conventional animal manure with alternative fertilizers, such as digestates from biogas production, green waste compost or organic bio fertilizer, combined with crop rotation with legumes · It is not feasible to phase out antibiotics and anthelmintics completely since sick animals must be treated. However, it is feasible to reduce the consumption significantly without reducing production quantity and quality · It is feasible to replace sulphur for apple production with organic approved fungicides · It is not feasible to phase out copper completely for the wine varieties grown today without a very large decrease in quality and yield

A Method to Quantify the Detailed Risk of Serious Injury in Agricultural Production

Agricultural injuries are a valuable social sustainability indicator. However, current methods use sector-scale production data, so are unable to assess the impact of changes in individual farming practices. Here, we developed a method that adopts a life cycle approach to quantify the number of serious injuries during agricultural production processes and assess the potential impact of changes in agricultural practices. The method disaggregates agricultural production into operations and estimates the contribution each operation makes to the frequency of different types of injuries. The method was tested using data collected by survey during an expert workshop in which sixteen participants were asked to estimate the parameters related to typical dairy cattle and pig farms. Parameter estimates for specific operations varied considerably between participants, so normalized values were used to disaggregate sector-scale statistics to production operations. The results were in general agreement with the results from other studies. Participants found it challenging to quantify the potential effect of new technologies. Provided suitable empirical statistical data are available, the method can be used to quantify the risk of injury associated with individual products and provide an ex-ante assessment of future developments in farming practices

Farmknowledge.org - knowledge platform of OK-Net Arable

The complexity of organic farming requires farmers to have a very high level of knowledge and skills, but exchange on organic farming techniques remains limited. In order to increase productivity and quality in organic arable cropping in Europe, the thematic network OK-Net Arable under Horizon 2020 has the aim to improve the exchange of innovative and traditional knowledge among farmers, farm advisers and scientists. An online platform for knowledge exchange has been created, offering innovative education and end-user material as well as communication between stakeholders. A number of specific tools – providing information about how to put existing knowledge from research and practise into use – have been chosen. They are presented on the platform with the possibility to find solutions, evaluate them, comment and discuss them or ask questions about them and to suggest new tools to be shown on the platform

OK-Net Arable online knowledge platform

The complexity of organic farming requires farmers to have a very high level of knowledge and skills, but exchange on organic farming techniques remains limited. In order to increase productivity and quality in organic arable cropping in Europe, the thematic network OK-Net Arable under Horizon 2020 has the aim to improve the exchange of innovative and traditional knowledge among farmers, farm advisers and scientists. An online platform for knowledge exchange has been created, offering innovative education and end-user material as well as communication between stakeholders. A number of specific tools – providing information about how to put existing knowledge from research and practise into use – have been chosen. They are presented on the platform with the possibility to find solutions, evaluate them, comment and discuss them or ask questions about them and to suggest new tools to be shown on the platform

Use of WWW for agricultural advisory services: An example from crop production

The World Wide Web offers very promising perspectives for communication of up-to-date information which is tailored to fit the conditions of the particular user. The WWW makes it possible and practicable to collect up-to-date information from different relevant, independent sources and integrate it in the information presented for the user. This makes the WWW a potentially very valuable tool for agricultural advisory services. Within crop production a WWWbased information system, Pl@nteInfo, was launched in 1996. During the growing season the main information in Pl@nteInfo was risk calculations and field recordings of important crop diseases and pests, together with agricultural weather information. Based on the experience from the first season the system will be developed further in 1997 with additional facilities and with a closer tailoring of the information to the farm conditions, as submitted by the user. It will also be possible to develop relevant WWW-based information systems f..

Open research repository for organic agriculture

The Open Access archive Organic Eprints (www.orgprints.org) has been developed since the start of 2002 and in 2015 it included 16,000 items and gets more than 240,000 visits per month. The archive is open for all to use and registered users can deposit their research publications from refereed journals as well as non-refereed sources. Organic Eprints is the largest database in the world with publications about Organic Agriculture & Food Systems research. Organic Eprints has 26 national editors checking the deposits for bibliographical correctness and subject relevance. Organic Eprints has adapted the use of keywords from an external thesaurus, AGROVOC