Projects - dr. A (Aart) van der Linden

Postdoctoral project 'Investing in Sustainable Livestock Production'

Global demand for animal and crop products is expected to increase in future. Production of more animal and crop products per unit of land is a strategy to meet the increased demand for food. Some regions in the world have yields close to the potential, while in others production is only a fraction of what can be potentially produced. Quantification of yield gaps is thus essential to get insight how much current production levels can be increased. This project aims to quantify and analyse yield gaps for beef cattle in Uruguay and for dairy cattle in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, and to investigate the effects of improvement options for these three countries.

Yield gaps are quantified by using mechanistic crop and livestock models. The model LiGAPS-Beef (Livestock simulator for Generic analysis of Animal Production Systems - Beef cattle) is used to simulate potential and feed-limited production of beef cattle. The model LiGAPS-Dairy is developed to simulate the theoretical production levels of dairy cattle. Crop growth models and data from the Global Yield Gap Atlas (www.yieldgap.org) are used to quantify yield gaps for feed crops. Based on yield gap analysis, improvement options for farming systems will be simulated.

Within this project, I collaborate with the WorldBank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. This research is to be published in a FAO report and a scientific paper.

Project 'AnimalFuture: Steering Animal Production Systems towards Sustainable Future'

Farmers in Europe are under pressure to increase their productivity and competitiveness in the global trade of agricultural products. Increasing productivity and competitiveness can be achieved by adopting innovations. Innovations affect the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of farms. This project aims to make European livestock sector more resilient and competitive by assessing the effects of innovations, including their effect on sustainability. Modelling can help to get more insight in the synergies and trade-offs in sustainability indicators when introducing innovations.

Within this large European project (8 universties and research centres involved) my tasks are:

To make an inventory of existing models for livestock and farms with livestock applicable to the European livestock sector
Evaluate to what extent and how the available models assess productivity and sustainability
Integrate available models to simulate the effect of innovations on productivity and environmental, economic, and social sustainability

Developing sustainable breeding strategies for dairy cattle in China with emphasis on improved resilience
PhD project by Rui Shi. China’s desire to increase its self-sufficiency for milk production would inevitably result in a dramatic impact on the...

dr. A (Aart) van der Linden Universitair docent

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Subdivision	Animal Production Systems
Expertise	Agricultural systems, Animal physiology and biochemistry, Animal production systems, Grasslands, Plant physiology, Plant production systems, Beef cows, Food security, Agricultural production systems, Simulation models, Sustainable agriculture, Systems analysis, Gap models, Benchmarking, Quantitative methods, Dynamic models, Animal husbandry

Developing sustainable breeding strategies for dairy cattle in China with emphasis on improved resilience