This project aims to explore how Danish organic livestock farms can evolve into more robust and sustainable systems, both socially and ecologically. It also investigates whether diversification can serve as an effective strategy to support this transition.
  

The primary impact of ANIVERS will be practice- and science-based inspiration to diversify organic animal farming systems towards resilience from animal to systems levels. ANIVERS responds to an urgent need for systemic, transdisciplinary, and holistic solutions to address complex issues in organic animal farms in their current contexts. Much current research remains siloed within single disciplines and is reluctant to engage in participatory action. Anivers builds on a transdisciplinary problem analysis, identifies relevant analytical methodologies across disciplines, and involves a range of actors related to these systems.

ANIVERS’ overall research question is: How can Danish organic animal farming systems develop to become ecologically and socially resilient and sustainable in relation to surrounding food and governance systems?

Based on this, the following questions will be investigated in a 17-month project period: 

1. How can we learn across disciplines from the current and past to co-create transdisciplinary scientific knowledge and gain insights into diversified organic animal farming, and which transdisciplinary research methodologies can be used to analyse and describe such systems?
2. How can actors in organic animal farming and food sectors collaborate to overcome key barriers and enable the transition towards ecological, social, and governance sustainability?
3. How can diversification be understood in multifaceted organic animal farming using different methods. 

ANIVERS is novel in its strong systemic approach, spanning time, space, and social, ecological, and governance dimensions across disciplines.
The project will also have impact through identifying transdisciplinary scientific methodologies while analysing current scientific knowledge and lived practice experience. Learning across a range of animal species (dairy cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry, and honeybees), aiming at investigating how they can supplement each other in diversified systems will be inspirational in many stakeholder communities, as well as the perspectives combining history, social science, practice examples, natural science, and draw on local and international inspiration.

ANIVERS is coordinated by senior researcher Mette Vaarst, Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Section for Management and Modelling. Senior researcher Yoko Dupont is co-leading WP3: Analysing aspects of diversity through case studies.