Vista Milk
agent of growth for the “IrishAn dairy industry by being a
world leader in fundamental and translational research for, inter alia, precision pasturebased digital dairying and the utilisation of focussed and commercially sustainable technology both upstream and downstream of the entire food chain.
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Update from the Vistamilk Research Center by Professor Donagh Berry VistaMilk is a €40m research center co-funded by Science Foundation Ireland, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and over 50 industry partners including the Irish HolsteinFriesian Association. The long-term strategy of the VistaMilk Centre is to be an agent of growth for the Irish dairy industry by being a world leader in fundamental and translational research for, inter alia, precision pasture-based digital dairying and the utilisation of focussed and commercially sustainable technology both upstream and downstream of the entire food chain. The vision of the VistaMilk Centre is to be a world leader in the Agri-Food technology sector through innovation and enhanced sustainability across the dairy supply chain, positively impacting the environment, animal well-being and the health of consumers. This will be achieved by greatly improving the soil to gut supply chain connectivity thereby improving resource efficiency, better meeting consumers’ expectations, and improving profitability and resilience.
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The opportunities that arise at the interface between Agri-Food and digital technologies will be the basis for the competitive advantage. One flagship project in VistaMilk includes the quantification of how much carbon is actually being captured (i.e., sequestered) by Irish soils and how soil/pasture management influences this. Ireland now has equipment units to quantify this sequestration potential in an area greater than the whole of Africa and probably has the greatest density of such units than any other country globally. The potential outcome of this research is huge in mitigating the stated net carbon emissions of agriculture as a whole, not just dairy. VistaMilk boasts the ownership of the only machines in Ireland that are being used to measure methane emissions in grazing dairy cows. These machines are being used to firstly quantify the baseline of methane output of grazing Irish dairy cows; the other objectives are to evaluate feed additives to reduce methane as well as quantify the potential of breeding to reduce methane emissions.
