Knowledge cycle for GHG emission mitigation: the cases of climate care cattle farms in the EU

The European Commission seeks to actively implement the Green Deal policy with the slogan “Now or it will be too late”. For many entrepreneurs, especially farmers, this involves a significant burden. This could be explained both by a relatively slow production cycle and natural production constraints and by the multifaceted impact of expected changes. Besides, it should be remembered that GHGs represent an essential component of the biological life cycle needed for the ecosystem of the planet. Therefore, when deciding on measures for GHG mitigation, it is important not to disrupt the natural biological life cycle, which involves an increase in the global population and the need to provide them with food. Based on the CCCF project, the present research analyses the ability of farmers in 8 EU Member States to acquire knowledge and transform it into climate-friendly practices. It involves measurements of their understanding and knowledge, identification of their wishes and needs, a selection of GHG mitigation measures, as well as calculation of the expected GHG emission mitigation effect (AgreCalc calculator), an analysis of costs and benefits of implementing the measures (MACC) and farmer decisions to implement the measures. Despite the common goals of the EU, farmers' understanding, desires and readiness to implement GHG emission mitigation practices differ, which could be partly explained by different national policy support measures and farming structures in the EU Member States. It is interesting that the farmers' and experts’ understanding of the practical implementation of GHG mitigation measures differs while maintaining the idea of the implementation, which in turn is largely determined by the differences in national livestock farming practices and affected by many factors: traditions, path dependence, soil and environmental quality, climatic conditions etc. Overall, the results revealed that there was a strong need for a bottom-up selection of GHG mitigation measures in agricultural policies, as well as a lot of effort to be made to the transfer of technologies and knowledge, even though farmers were generally favourably disposed to mitigate the climate change.