GAIA actions 2015
5/11/2015 Participation in the GAIA EPIXEIREIN (ENTERPRENEURSHIP) Conference titled
“Enterprising farmers and their organizations signal the restart of the agricultural economy.”
The 2nd Panhellenic Conference for the Development of Greek Agriculture titled “Enterprising farmers and their organizations signal the restart of the agricultural economy” took place in Zappeion Megaron on November 4th-5th, 2015.
Lecturers included representatives of Greece’s and the EU’s agricultural and cooperative segments, as well as prominent university professors.
In his speech titled “Support for dairy farming: Contract Farming and other actions” Mr. I. Vastardis, Director of DELTA’s Milk Control spoke about DELTA’s recent collaboration with Piraeus Bank on the Contract Farming Program, and on the GAIA Action Plan’s seminar “Sustainable Animal Farming: Prospects and Challenges” which took place in Alexandria Imathias, on October 27th, 2015.
27/10/2015 Seminar in Alexandria Imathias
As part of their GAIA Action Plan, DELTA organised a seminar titled “Sustainable Animal Farming: Prospects and Challenges” in Alexandria Imathias.
Participation in the seminar was 60-strong, including animal farmers as well as representatives from universities, research centers, the public sector, and the agricultural private sector.
Given the current economic climate, through this seminar, we aim to support professionals involved in primary production, by analysing present difficulties and suggesting alternative courses of action.
The sustainability of professional growers and animal farmers can be achieved by lowering milk production costs and improving land use during the winter months, as well as the availability of protein-rich leguminous plants for animal feed, the use of new techniques in silage, enhanced management of animal capital, and other more strategic actions, such as contract farming.
The above were some of the important issues which were discussed during the seminar by prominent academics and scientists. The discussion that followed, which included the participation of producers, proved to be very constructive; although it was agreed that there are no magic solutions, it is possible to improve competitiveness in primary production through consistency and cooperation.
14-16/10/2015 Hellenic Society of Animal Production seminar in Giannitsa. Presentation of the scientific study on leguminous plants by the Agricultural University of Athens.
On October 14th-16th, the Spiritual Center of Giannitsa hosted the 30th scientific seminar of the Hellenic Society of Animal Production, under the auspices of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food, the Region of Central Macedonia and the Municipality of Pella.
Participants included scientists from the country’s top universities, the research centers of
HAO-Demeter, several other institutions, organizations and companies, all of which presented the results of their research and development efforts on the subjects of animal farming, as well as the issues faced by the industry in Greece.
For the third year in a row, the Agricultural University of Athens presented their scientific study–part of the GAIA Action Plan–on the best use of Greek soil and the promotion of leguminous plant cultivation. This study, titled “Study of the oat-bean coculture regarding the qualitative and quantitative features of the produced chloromass” (I. Chatzigeorgiou, E. Fortatos, G. Zervas) was presented by Professor Mr. I. Chatzigeorgiou of the Agricultural University of Athens.
The results highlighted the potential of using soil of limited fertility, which remain uncultivated, for the coculture of oats-beans, since they can provide an output in protein similar to high-fertility soil.
2014-2015: Utilization of leguminous plants in cooperation with the Agricultural University of Athens.
Remaining committed to our goal of utilising Greek soil for the production of protein-rich animal feed, we initiated an experimental cultivation in cooperation with the Agricultural University of Athens.
This cooperation, which started in 2012, involves the winter cultivation and study of different leguminous plant-grain combinations (vetch-barley, oat-bean, oat-pea) in soils characterized by different productivity levels (rich, irrigated, poor, dry).
One of the areas of this study includes dairy cow nutrition, which allows us to draw useful results from the inclusion of the above-mentioned combinations in animal feed. By substituting corn silage, which is low in protein, with vetch-barley silage which is higher in protein, we noticed that the volume of produced milk and its fat content remained the same, while there was a reduction of soy flour consumption of 0.8 kg per cow, per day. Just as important, this had no impact on the animals’ productivity and welfare.