Participatory research has become a useful tool for many animal scientists thanks to the SOLID project. In Spain the scientists at the Animal Nutrition Institute in Granada have experienced how working with the farmers can add new dimensions and a broader perspective to their scientific work.
By Ulla Skovsbøl
The agricultural scientists from 10 European countries involved in the SOLID project on low-input and organic dairy production have so far not only produced and published scientific results since the project started in 2011 – but many of them have also developed new skills and been able to add new tools to their science tool box.
“The major benefit of being involved with SOLID is becoming part of an international network of agricultural scientists with very diverse backgrounds. The cross-border cooperation has a major positive influence on our science,” says David R. Yáñez-Ruiz, a Spanish nutritionist well-known to all the participants at SOLID´s 5th Annual Project and Stakeholder Platform Meeting in Granada (May 2015).
Cooperation with goat farmers
David was the unremitting, hardworking and helpful organizer of the platform meeting, but in his everyday life he is an animal nutritionist at the Animal Nutrition Institute, Estación Experimental del Zaidín (CSIC) in Granada, Spain.
Within SOLID David R. Yáñez-Ruiz and his colleagues at the institute have focused on the use of agro-industrial by-products as feed for small ruminants, mainly dairy goats, and thanks to SOLID he has learned about participatory research and cooperated with farmers in the region of Granada in Andalusia, Spain to conduct on farm feeding trials.
“The SOLID work allowed me to include sustainability aspects into my research, which I had not focused on before. But first and foremost it urged me to work more closely with farmers through participatory research. I hadn´t been involved in this type of cooperation before, and I found the close interaction with the practitioners rather useful and developing,” he says.
The farmers´opinions count
“We have conducted interviews and discussions with farmers and held a national
workshop – things we have never done before, and I consider this kind of interaction very important to us as scientists. It is obvious that we have to take the opinions of the farmers seriously as they are the end users of the knowledge we generate,” he adds.
“Of course we knew that before, but now we have become more aware of the actual tools we can use to interact with farmers as ultimately we work for them and the rest of the society” says the Spanish animal nutritionist.