Deadline: 6 June 2024
The Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) and the New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries invites eligible Irish and New Zealand Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) to submit joint research proposals under the “2024 Joint Call for Research Proposals on strategies, technologies and novel systems to reduce and account for greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture ruminant production systems.”
Scope
- Strategies to reduce GHG emissions from agricultural production activities, in particular from ruminant livestock systems, will be fundamental to realising targets and objectives that will contribute to climate action by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050. New Zealand and Ireland are globally recognised for efficient pasture based systems that have been developed over many years. One of the challenges for both countries is finding technologies and practices for mitigating GHG emissions from already advanced pasture-based systems. Substantial emission reductions in these advanced pasture-based systems will require breakthrough research as well as tools and systems that increase uptake and the application of new technologies and practices.
- Underpinning these strategies is the urgent need to incorporate measures into both inventories and to support end-user adoption. This requires research to specify new emission factors, support model development and/or new ways of collating activity data, as well as ensuring that measures can contribute towards climate action through adoption and use in the agriculture and land use sector.
- The research topics covered in this Call aim to advance the body of knowledge into large scale applicable practices and technologies in key areas of research, which include:
- Inventory refinement and improvement,
- The development and assessment of greenhouse gas mitigating technologies, and digitalisation and standardisation of data to support climate mitigation.
- Taken together these areas offer significant reduction potential in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and the sequestration of atmospheric carbon. While proposals should be impactful in terms of their mitigation potential, applicants must consider the combined effects of processes in terms of whole-farm profitability, resilience, potential effectiveness on farms (vs. experimental results), and the likely adoption rate.
Topics
- Topic 1: Refinement of agricultural GHG emissions inventories through the development of emission factors for Methane, Nitrous Oxide and Carbon Dioxide
- Advancing analysis of GHG emissions from agriculture, including agricultural soils, is a priority issue and research in line with the IPCC framework is needed for the development of emissions factors which integrate with higher tier inventories, and which can be used in the respective National Inventory Reports for both countries.
- The developments and refinement across different factors should consider, as relevant, such aspects as farming and land management systems and models, different management mitigation practices, seasonal variations and/or other factors such as soil types, soil moisture/drainage, topography, etc. Examples of types of proposals sought under topic 1 include:
- Refinement of national GHG inventories through the development of emission factors covering seasonal variations in common pasture species (covering CH4, N2O, and/or CO2).
- Refine the CH4 conversion factor (Ym) for dairy, beef and sheep to include the effects of for example sward type, grazing management and sward quality including the effects of different forage species, and investigate the impact of level of intake, or physiological state on the methane conversion factor (Ym).
- Topic 2: Development and assessment of technologies, including Methane and Nitrogen inhibitors, for the mitigation of GHGs from ruminant systems
- The development and examination of mitigation technologies to directly reduce agricultural GHG emissions in ruminant livestock systems is urgently needed. The investigation of new or existing mitigation technologies should aim to accelerate market development and implementation of relevant technologies to facilitate use by stakeholders.
- Examples of types of proposals sought under topic 2 include:
- Investigation, risk assessment and validation of animal (health, welfare, performance), or food (residues in primary and processed animal products), or environmental safety characteristics of relevant feed additives for CH4 or fertiliser N2O inhibition, following their use for GHG emission reduction purposes.
- Development and evaluation of precision on-farm/on-pasture delivery mechanisms of CH4 and N2O inhibitors in pastural livestock systems, such as boluses or encapsulation for pasture-based methane emission reductions, with the aim of low cost and low effort solutions for farmers to be able to use them on the farm.
- Topic 3: Data and digitalisation, including the standardisation of methodologies, to support climate-related action and management practices in agriculture
- Applications under Topic 3 should lead to the development of digital approaches and tools (such remote sensing and proxy sensors, IoT etc) and/or support the development of high-quality data collection, management and processing. This could include the deployment and monitoring of on-farm climate related activities/practices, provide cost-efficiencies, measurement, monitoring and/or early warning systems, for incorporation into policy, planning or inventory reporting; or the development and use of data standardisation, methodologies, analytics and machine learning to enhance the consistency, effectiveness and accuracy of activity datasets and data analysis to inform climate action and policy etc.
- Proposals should promote safe and equitable access and benefit sharing of data, in particular around relevant national guidelines and/or legislation relating to artificial intelligence and personal data etc, for climate action. Such digital technologies, tools and methodologies should, as far as possible, be low cost and applicable to large scale population-based analyses to advance the uptake, use and exchange of climate-related practices by farmers. Examples of types of proposals sought under topic 3 include:
- The use of satellite technology or other remote sensing networks at a national scale to collect robust activity data for verification and reporting of GHG emission in a format that can be used in national GHG inventories.
- Methodology development for accounting above and/or below ground biomass involved in carbon sequestration. This could include the establishment of instruction manuals for quantifying on farm carbon, and methodology development for investigating the carbon balance/cycle of farms, quantifying key carbon pools and flows.
Funding
- A maximum total funding amount of €6m has been allocated to this Call.
- New Zealand: €1,000,000
- Ireland: €1,000,000
Who Can Apply?
- The scope of MPI and DAFM funding is limited to eligible Research Bodies situated within their respective jurisdictions.
- Applicants who are not eligible for funding by their national funding body or applicants from countries not participating in the Call are welcome to be partners in a research consortium on a self-financing basis, they cannot be coordinators and are not counted for in terms of the required minimum number of partners.
- The minimum duration of a project is 36 months, up to a maximum of 48 months.
- The requested total funding cannot exceed €2M per proposal. This equates to a requested total funding amount per funder of €1M per proposal.
- Industry and Third-Party Participation
- Applicants who are not eligible for funding by their national funding body or applicants from countries not participating in the Call are welcome to join research consortia, but this is on a self-funding basis or through in-kind contributions. They will not receive any funding (associated partners) and will not be included in the required minimum number of partners in the consortium and they cannot be the coordinator of the project. Such partners should state in advance the source of funding for their participation in the project. A letter of commitment must be included in the proposal application confirming the source of funding.
For more information, visit DAFM.