From June 19th to 21rst, 15 European journalists have been received by our Norwegian friends as Norwegian Guild Agricultural Journalists hosted a low budget press trip to Norway with theme, “Carbon, No Fence, and Lower Methane – An Insight into Future Agriculture,”
The first stop was in a farm located at As, for the Karbon festival dedicated to the soil enhancing method Karbon Agro, exploring soil structure, root systems and soil biology by some exchanges, booths and field demonstrations.
The meat degustation was great, beef coming from Dyster farm that we were visiting the next morning. Good connection between agriculture and food!
Research center Nofima works on several innovative subjects as cellular meat production
Nearby, Nofima Food Research Institute explained their main programs and we’ve been able to visit the labs, for example the one dedicated to cellular meat production before dining on the institute canteen (thanks again to the chief who took care of all specifics like food allergies).
Friday morning, we began farms tour by Dyster farm, owned by Tove and Hohan Bjørneby who use the Monil virtual fence. 40 of their 210 hectares are pasture for their 55 cows, which are of their own breeds mixes based on Wagyu, Limousine, Hereford and some more. The farm has it own slaughterhouse and a farmshop.
Obio uses only norwegian wood to produce biochar, which shows a lot of very interesting positive impacts on animals
Going 180 km north, the group reach first the city of Rudhøgda to visit Obio. The company produce Biochar, the new black gold, only based on pure Norwegian wood.
Then we went to Hamar, the central city of Norwegian genetics. Exchanges with the Dutch/Norwegian company Topigs Norsvin give the European journalists a deep insight on the world’s second largest pig genetics breeding company and Norwegian pig production.
Next stop was also about genetics with Geno, and their bull station. Geno is a breeding company owned by the Norwegian farmers and breeds Norwegian Red. Geno also has long-life semen in their daughter company Spermvital. Geno told about their sustainable breeding, titled: «Breeding for better life».
Saturday was also quite busy with a first stop to discover Nofence technology. The firm had been the first to propose this solution, seven years ago. Oda Westby, working for Nofence is the daughter of Ingrid and Bjørn Westby from family farm Rustad, who implement this solution for their heifers, castrated bulls and dry cows. It saves a lot of fencing work and make it possible to use more grazing lands on difficult areas.
Near Oslo airport, the last farm the group visited is a dairy one, owned by Torynn and Hans-Petter Aurstad which conduct tests and measures of methane emission for Geno on their norwegian red cows.
Text and pictures: Yanne Boloh, France