From Jan 16-17, 2027, the Center for Draft Cattle Research and Education will host the next World Draft Cattle Symposium. After the great success of 2024, the symposium now intends to focus more on the practical use of draft cattle around the globe and in the 21^st century as well as on the preservation of skills. We want to bring together practitioners, engineers and scientists for comprehensive discussions on best practice examples as well as to explore innovative new ways of understanding, training and utilising draft cattle. We are excited to document and preserve relevant draft cattle skills and the traditional knowledge that comes with it.

The symposium will be hosted virtually in order to give as many people the chance to participate as possible. It also intends to create high standards in order to make it as accessible and participatory for local farmer communities, especially in the global south.

We are looking for submissions that fit within the following topics

• Crop management and rotation systems
• Market gardening strategies
• Logging
• Transportation
• Working cattle in animal therapy
• Networking and Community building
• Skills and Oral histories
• Cattle behaviour

Please send in a written abstract (max. 250 words) of your proposal to:
Claus Kropp, c.kropp@kloster-lorsch.de

Deadline for submissions: September 10, 2026

Important notes:

• All chosen conference sessions will be required to pre-record a video of 15 minutes length. These video-sessions will then be shared with conference participants prior to the conference and then discussed during the conference itself.
  
  

• The conference planning team has decided to expand the formats of contributions to be submitted for the conference. It is now possible also to submit short written contributions or other relevant information formats (e.g., illustrated cultural sequence diagrams, drawn traction systems, tech guides) related to the conference topics. The aim is to significantly expand the wealth of resources available to the conference in January. This will allow conference participants to delve even deeper into the subject matter and make the discussions during the conference even more intensive.                          We look forward to your suggestions and ideas. The deadline for submissions remains September 10.