Country Living Labs’ kick-offs: first meeting of Estonian Living Lab 28.10.21

The first meeting of Estonian Living Lab took place on 28 October 2021 in Mäo, Estonia as a hybrid event with virtual and in person attendance. 15 participants represented the main database operators Estonian Livestock Performance Recording and Agricultural Registers and Information Board, dairy and beef farmers, breeding cooperative, dairy industry, Ministry of Rural Affairs, input and technology suppliers, researchers, Estonian Dairy Cluster, and Estonian Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce. Discussion started with introduction of the project, and continued with a review on the existing cattle databases in Estonia, the data collected, data flow and data users. The project team presented an overview also on the main databases and data flow along the supply chain in the other three SustainIT partner countries.

The meeting proceeded with the discussion on the current state and future needs of cattle health and welfare data entry and collection procedures, incl. on hoof health, on types of data that is collected and its availability to different parties, data interests of various stakeholders, data needs of the industry and public, incl. on antibiotics use, carbon footprint, grazing, feed and slaughter data. The biggest problem discussed included challenges relating to manual data entry, lack of integration and interoperability of existing databases, private sector’s capabilities, access to public databases by industry and other stakeholders. As in the coming programming period of the CAP Estonia plans to implement farm payment for herd health management program, the existing databases could expand the data coverage to help implement this initiative both in farms and also in the public sector.