The Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) is one of the cornerstones of UK government policy to help agriculture to become more productive – producing more whilst minimising environmental impact.
The Countryside Productivity Scheme 2015 is part of the RDPE and 2015 grant funding is now available to farmers. It includes grants to help farmers improve the productivity and health of their livestock. Here’s a link:
The Countryside Productivity Scheme 2015 – Animal productivity, health and welfare grants.
It’s interesting to note that “precision livestock farming” technology has come to the fore with these grants. For example, sensor-based systems that can monitor cows for lameness, rumen health, calving monitors and oestrus detectors.
As with all types of grant, you have to do your homework and set out your case for funding with a proposal (which has to be signed off by your vet in some cases), but it still looks to be a valuable opportunity to make your livestock enterprise more efficient.
The Countryside Productivity Scheme 2015
Orchid has a wide range of software covering dairy and beef production – very often, it’s advantageous to implement a farm software package that can bring bring together data from a wide range of sources. Once loaded into a management program, it can be easily analysed and manipulated to produce key performance indicators and summary reports for the farm manager and his advisers.