Based on research from the SOLID project Spanish nutritionists recommend Mediterranean  farmers to apply a low input strategy using by-products from the olive- and greenhouse industry as feed for dairy goats.

By Ulla Skovsbøl

Tomato salad with rich olive oil is a simple but delicious dish on the Mediterranean dining table. But tomatoes and olives are not only suited for the human diet  – silages made out of waste from the olive and tomato industries have also proved to be an attractive feed for dairy goats.

Within the SOLID project the scientists at the Animal Nutrition Institute at the research institution CSIC in Granada have tested a broad range of by-products fit for husbandry production on low input farms.

In particular, leaves and pulp from the olive oil industry and wasted fruits from the intensive greenhouse production – primarily tomatoes – appeared to be promising as goat feed.

Both types of products were fed as silage and tested in vitro as well as in vivo at the institute and also on case study farms. Silage made out of tomato waste mixed with straw and barley appears to be very well suited for feeding ruminants, although the challenge is the high moisture of the tomatoes.

Olives in tomatoes for dinner

The tomato and barley silage has a moderate content of protein and provides good energy for dairy goats. However, Spanish goats are not used to silage, and thus often reluctant to eat it – contrary to what is popularly believed, goats are quite conservative when it comes to new types of feed, David R. Yáñez-Ruiz, nutritionist at CSIC, explains.

Also olive leaves mixed with both barley and olive pulp turned out to suit the small ruminant very well. The pulp cannot be fed separately as it is too wet, but the dry leaves can balance the silage, and olive silage proved to be a valid replacement for medium quality hay. The energy content (from the remaining olive oil in the pulp)  is higher, but the olive silage contains less protein compared to hay.

The project has tried to identify the ideal composition of the silage made out of by-products and has developed specific recommendations for the farmers:

The ideal Mediterranean by-product silage

• Olive-silage: 50 % olive pulp, 25 % olive leaves, 25 % barley.
• Tomato-silage: 85 % tomatoes, 15 % straw

Although, silage made out of by-products proved to suit the small ruminants well, the farmers turned out to be as skeptical as the goats when it came to using it, as silage is not commonly used in the region.

However, when the goat farmers saw the positive results, they changed their minds, and even more so when it appeared that they could save money using the by-product silage.

Low-input a promising strategy in the South

In general David R. Yáñez-Ruiz is very satisfied with the out-come of the research conducted within the SOLID project in Spain.

“In my opinion, the low input aspects are the most important, in particular in Southern Spain,” he says.

“Organic systems are quite well-defined, whereas low-input farming is more vaguely defined and therefore in general complicated to address. But in particular, in Southern Spain the perspectives of using by-products to much larger extent are quite promising.”

“In Spain, we have to differentiate between North and South. In the North they have sufficient pastures and grass available, and farmers can “afford” to run low-input farming, whereas it is more difficult to run a farm with less input in the dry Southern part of the country,” he explains.

However, during the last years, the interest in low-input farming has increased even in the South:

“During the last years, prices have been going up on feed, fertilizers and all other farm input. Therefore, more farmers are going back to less intensive farming strategies with lower inputs to reduce the costs of production. And under these circumstances, our research appears to be even more useful,” David R. Yáñez-Ruiz concludes.

The SOLID activities at CSIC, Granada

• Developed sustainability assessment tool based on data from various farms.
• Held meetings with farmers in order to identify their needs for advisory services.
• Conducted a number of experiments with different by-products and analysed the sustainability of these products as animal feed

The farm has been involved in the participatory research conducted by the Animal Nutrition Institute at CSIC in Granada aimed at finding the means to reduce livestock feeding costs as part of the SOLID project.

Apparently, the goats also enjoyed being involved in SOLID, in particular as it implied new and interesting diets such as self-service dinner in the cauliflower field, humorously documented on the video.  They also tested silage made with waste from the tomato and olive industries but self-service cauliflowers was the winner!

Read more about the tomato and olive silage

…. and watch a video about feeding goats with byproducts.

By Ulla Skovsbøl

For two days in May the elegant lobby and the shady conference rooms of Hotel Saray in Granada buzzed with intensive discussions on cows and goats, organic farming methods and low-input farming, breeding and feeding and milk production as about 50 agricultural scientists and stakeholders from most of the 10 EU countries involved in the SOLID project met for the 5th Annual Project and Stakeholder Platform Meeting.

The participants agreed that the scientific discussions in plenum as well as in smaller groups were fruitful, but also the excursions and the social events contributed to make the Granada-meeting a success.

“It was fantastic to have the privilege of visiting Granada for the 5^th Annual Project meeting of SOLID.  The location was excellent and it was a delight to see so many of the “SOLID family” together. The meeting provided a forum for each of our work packages to update on progress and permit discussion with our stakeholders on implications of the research conducted,”  SOLID´s overall project leader Nigel Scollan, Aberystwyth University (UK), says.

Participatory research championed

The meeting in Granada was the penultimate meeting of SOLID and consequently rich in results presented across all the work packages. The discussions were focused on the implications of the research to the organic and low input dairy sectors at different levels, farm, policy and scientific and were rather useful, according to Nigel Scollan.

“In extension of the discussions in Granada it is also important to consider how results from any project fit in relation to other outputs from other EC and nationally funded research projects and emphasis was placed on these aspects in our meeting in Granada,” he adds.

Important discussions

In particular the session hosted by Niels Halberg (Denmark) and Raffaele Zanoli (Italy) on “implications of work” at the farm and policy end was excellent, according to Scollan, and other discussion points of great importance were “Innovation as Farmers´ Empowerment Tool”, “Sharing Information”, “No-one Size Fits All” and “Making European Dairying More Resilient.”

Furthermore, Scollan states it is important to note, that the discussions at the annual meeting also highlighted the fact that two different types of low-input farms exists alongside each other:  on one hand those who aim at low-input farming (input minimisers), and on the other those who have to be low-input farmers (input constrained).  Organic dairying may be either ”low-input” or “high-input” depending on the farmer´s situation, and within SOLID there are good examples of both.

Participatory research

While staying in Granada, the scientists even got the opportunity to visit an interesting goat farm, the Pérez family farm in the Andalusian countryside, which not only Scollan but probably all the visitors found excellent.

The Pérez family farm has been involved in the participatory research of SOLID and is a good example of useful cooperation between farmers and scientists.

“The SOLID project has championed participatory research and it is encouraging to note how this model is central to activity under Horizon 20:20 and the European Innovation Partnership on Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability,” Nigel Scollan says.

Final meeting in April 2016

The meeting in Granada was the last annual meeting in the project.

“As we are now in the final months of the project it was also good to note the increased emphasis on regional workshops to promote results and implications of our research.  The e-Learning platform in SOLID will also be developing in the final part of the project and will be an important legacy for SOLID,” he notes.

The regional workshops will be held during the autumn of 2015, and the only remaining joint activity of the project is now the final SOLID meeting which will be held in Brussels in January 2016. This 2-day meeting will focus on the final “headline” results and consider in some depth the major messages from four years of research and innovation by scientists, advisors and farmers from 25 partner institutions and organisations in ten different EU countries.

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