Davide Alessi

Davide Alessi

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I am Davide Alessi, a 25-year-old Italian student with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering. I am currently enrolled at the University of Trento (Italy) in the master’s degree course in Mechatronic Engineering. Thanks to the Erasmus program, I got the opportunity to study for six months at the University of Lisbon in 2021. It was one of the most significant educational experiences I did because it allowed me to discover one of my recent interests: evaluating the impact of processes (Life Cycle Assessment) to provide useful tools to people.

Increasing sustainability of swine diets and production systems in the Global South

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The main objective of this study was to develop animal ration formulation tools which would cover nutritional requirements with minimal effect on a diet price and reduce the environmental impact of animal production worldwide, without loss of productivity. By including different regions, this project aims to transform the swine supply chain to a more sustainable and equitable one without compromising the baseline efficiency globally. Thus, the main outcomes of the research are reducing the environmental impact of pig production and enhancing global food security. The impact of this research are: (1) formulated alternative diets may help diversify current pig diet formulations, (2) promote inclusion of more locally produced feed ingredient in different regions, (3) an open-source flexible and user-friendly GUI diet formulation tool will available to swine producers with support of the local Animal Science Extension offices and nutritionist, which will help swine producers make science-based decisions about how to mitigate their own pig diets’ environmental impact.