In March 2019, the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL), IFOAM EU and the French Research Institute for Organic Farming (ITAB) published the first RELACS Practice Abstract. A Practice Abstract contains practical guidelines for different actors of the food and farming system to solve a given problem, in this case farmers and farm advisors.
In the abstract, readers learn how peer-to-peer learning reduces antibiotic inputs and improve animal health and welfare in organic farming. Sometimes advisory services do not lead to an improvement in animal health. This can be due to a lack of ownership of arguments and recommendations. In Farmer Field Schools farmers advise each other. This results in recommendations are implementable and convincing. This in turn leads to a reduced use of antibiotics and incidences of mastitis and allows farmers to move from static to more dynamic health plans.
Read the full Practice Abstract and follow the RELACS project’s development on Twitter and Facebook.