The focus of animal breeding is no longer on purely physiological performance traits such as milk yield, daily gain and egg production. Many farmers now appreciate the robustness of old livestock breeds again.

The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) is also promoting "measures for sustainable animal breeding for healthy and robust animals as well as more environmental and climate protection" as part of the federal program for livestock farming. The funding is intended to counteract the sole breeding objective of "productive output" and to ensure greater health, robustness, emission reduction, but also increased genetic diversity between and within the various livestock breeds.
In order to achieve these goals, baseline research and the development of practical applications is supported. Universities and non-university research and development institutions as well as small and medium-sized enterprises are therefore called upon to send a project outline to Division323 "Animal Husbandry, Model Project Animal" of the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food by December 10 in order to receive individual funding of up to 100% of the project-related costs.

The funding is a contribution to the implementation of the national livestock strategy within the framework of the Federal Program Livestock and the Guideline for the Promotion of Research and Development Projects and of Measures for Technology and Knowledge Transfer for Sustainable Production, Processing and Marketing of Agricultural Products of the Federal Program Organic Farming and Other Forms of Sustainable Agriculture (BÖLN).
Here you can find more information about the funding and here you can find information about genetic diversity.