Smart Calf Rearing Conference 2027 · Cremona, 6–10 March 2027
Updated 3 October 2026 · Pro Farmer SRLS
What people ask us most often, answered in full. If your question is not here, write to smartcalfrearing@profarmer.it — a person reads it, and the answer usually ends up on this page for the next person.
It depends on what you come for, and the tickets page is built to make that visible: each option draws its own bar under the five days, so you can see at a glance what it covers and what it skips.
If you want more than one, the two packages cost less than the same days bought one by one — and the page tells you so while you are choosing, rather than letting you pay more than you need to.
No. It is an add-on: it goes with the Producer Day, the Scientific Conference, or the two together. It is the day in the middle, and on its own it would be a guided tour of Cremona rather than part of a conference. The whole week already contains it, so nothing needs adding there.
No. Producer Day + Scientific Conference covers 6, 8 and 9 March and stops there. Only the whole week includes everything: Producer Day, the Sunday tour, the two Scientific Conference days and the Farm Tour.
It can be booked on its own. You do not need a conference ticket to come on the farm visits: the Farm Tour is sold as a day of its own, and it can also be added to any other ticket. The Sunday tour is different — that one only goes with another day.
A place on the Farm Tour can also be used by someone other than the buyer. After payment the participant form asks who is coming on each day, and there is a box for handing a Farm Tour place to a colleague or a family member.
The Producer Day is in Italian, with interpreting. The Scientific Conference is in English. The Sunday tour has an English-speaking guide. The languages of each day are written on the tickets page, next to the day itself.
Your ticket admits you to the days you chose, with the programme, the interpreting, the catering and the transfers stated for those days on the tickets page when you buy.
It does not include travel to and from Cremona, accommodation, meals outside the stated catering, or personal insurance. The full wording is in §2 of the booking conditions.
Yes, if your ticket covers the Scientific Conference — on its own, in the package, or in the whole week. It is held on the evening of Sunday 7 March, the day before the scientific programme opens: you are expected there even though your days start on the Monday. It is where most people meet each other for the first time, and it is worth arriving in time for it.
A ticket that does not cover the Scientific Conference does not include it: the Producer Day on its own, and the Sunday tour or the Farm Tour added to a Producer Day. The venue is still being settled, and we will write to everyone who has booked as soon as it is: you do not have to keep checking the site.
One organised afternoon, the same for everybody: food and culture in Cremona, with an English-speaking guide, for the people who are already here on the Sunday and are waiting for the scientific programme to open on the Monday. It is not a choice between two excursions: there is a single itinerary and everyone who books it does the same one.
The exact shape is still being settled, and if we swap one visit for another of the same kind, that is what will happen. What does not change is the point of the day — something worth the afternoon, in company, before the conference begins.
No. It is included in every ticket that covers the Scientific Conference, and nobody is counting heads at the door. It is simply where most people meet each other for the first time, so skipping it costs you the easiest evening of the week. Tell us if you are not coming and we save a cover.
Roughly 09:00 to 17:00 on Wednesday 10 March, coaches leaving from and returning to Cremona. Plan your train or flight home from the evening onwards, not from mid-afternoon: a farm day runs on the farm's clock, and the exact times will be on the detailed programme.
CERZOO, the experimental farm of Università Cattolica, is certain. The others are being confirmed — a working farm has to be able to say yes on a given day, and we would rather name them late than name them wrong. They will be on the programme page and in the email that goes out before the conference.
Yes. Lunch on the Wednesday is part of the day, like the coach. You do not need to bring anything, and if there is something you cannot eat, tell us on the names form.
The outline is on the programme page and gets fuller as speakers confirm. The detailed programme — hour by hour, with rooms, farms and departure times — goes out by email to everyone who has booked, in the weeks before the conference. You do not have to come back and check: it reaches you.
We are looking at it. If it happens it will be announced on the programme page and by email, and it will not change anything you have already bought.
We are planning for around 250. It is the size the rooms and the farm visits are built for: big enough for the range of people to be worth it, small enough to actually talk to a speaker afterwards. Each day has a ceiling of its own: the tickets page says so when one is nearly full, and stops selling it when it is. So if a day matters to you, book it rather than watch it.
Everything happens in Cremona and its province: the Producer Day at Pieve Ecoenergia, the Scientific Conference in the Aula Magna of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, the Farm Tour among the farms of the Po valley, with coach transfer included.
Cremona is about 1 h 10 from Bergamo Orio al Serio airport and 1 h 40 from Milan Malpensa. Accommodation is not included and is yours to book — the where to stay page lists the places that have agreed a rate with us.
Accommodation is not included, and you book it yourself. We have agreed terms with a number of places in Cremona, listed with their telephone numbers and how far they are from the centre on the where to stay page.
When you book, say you are coming for SCRC 2027. That is what gets you the agreed conditions — without it you are just another guest, at the ordinary rate.
Pieve Ecoenergia is outside Cremona, and most people drive. If getting there under your own steam is awkward, there is a tick box on the names form: tick it and we count you. It is not a booking and it promises nothing — if enough people ask, we put a coach on and write to everyone who ticked with the time and the pick-up point.
Not as a service, no: getting from the airport to Cremona is yours to arrange — train, car or private transfer — and Pro Farmer does not book it for you. The coaches we do run are the ones written into the programme: the Farm Tour on the Wednesday, and the Saturday transfer if it goes ahead.
But if you cannot work it out on your own, write to us. We know the trains, the times and the drivers, and we would rather spend ten minutes on an email than have you miss the first morning. smartcalfrearing@profarmer.it.
Yes, and it is the normal case. Set the quantity next to each option — up to ten places per option — and pay once. You get one order and one invoice for the whole booking, and you give us the names of the people coming afterwards, on a separate form (see below).
You do not have to know the names while you are paying.
Yes. Italian VAT at 22% is added at payment and is due by everyone, companies outside Italy included. Admission to a physical event is taxed in the country where the event takes place, so the reverse charge does not apply here. The prices on the site are shown net, exactly as they appear on the invoice, with the final amount underneath in smaller type.
Yes, made out to the billing details you give at checkout. Check them before you pay: an invoice that has already been issued cannot simply be rewritten.
The form checks the shape of what you type — a codice fiscale with a wrong check character, or a VAT number of the wrong length, is caught before you reach the payment page rather than after.
By card, on Stripe's own secure page. We never see or store your card details: they never touch our site. You come back to us only once the payment has gone through.
First look in the spam folder — it is where it ends up most often. If it is not there either, you are not locked out: the form for the participants' names can be opened at calfconference2027.profarmer.it/nomi with your order number and the email address you bought with, and nothing else.
If you have neither, write to smartcalfrearing@profarmer.it from the address you used, and we will find the order.
Right after the payment you land on a form that asks who is coming: first name, surname, what they do, the farm or company name, and — only if you have it and want to give it — a phone number for the day itself. One set of fields per place you have bought.
You can close it and come back later: the same form is at /nomi, with your order number and email.
Free of charge until 19 February 2027, fifteen days before the conference.
Write to us with your order number and the new name. After that date we can no longer guarantee it: badges are printed, catering is confirmed on names, and the farms hold access lists that close in advance.
Full refund until 4 February 2027 — thirty days before the conference.
From 5 February, no refund — but the place can still be passed to someone else.
The date that counts is the date your email reaches us. A refund goes back to the card you paid with, VAT included, normally within ten working days. §4 of the booking conditions says the rest.
Two different cases, and they are treated differently. If it becomes impossible for reasons outside anyone's control — a pandemic, a conflict, an order from the authorities — the conference moves and your ticket stays valid for the new date, or you can pass it to someone else free of charge; if no new date is set within twelve months, you are refunded in full. If we call it off for reasons of our own, you are refunded in full. §6 of the booking conditions spells both out.
On the names form, the one you fill in after paying: each person has an optional dietary requirements box. Write it there rather than in an email — that way it stays attached to the right person, and the kitchen gets it as a list instead of as a memory.
It goes to whoever is cooking and to nobody else, and it is deleted at the end of the conference week. If something changes after you have sent the form, write to us and we change it.
We ask for the least we need to let a person into a lecture hall and onto a farm, and we do not ask for the participants' email addresses — which is why the notice for them has to travel through you. You will find it ready to copy, in both languages, above the names form.
What we hold, why, and for how long is written for them at calfconference2027.profarmer.it/your-data. The names are erased twenty-four months after the conference; invoices and accounting records we keep for ten years, because Italian law requires it.
The Producer Day and the Farm Tour take place in working farms, among animals that live there every day. What is asked of every visitor is respectful, careful behaviour: keep the animals calm, and observe the basic rules of biosecurity. The Pro Farmer staff will give you the guidelines for each farm, and will be there with you throughout.
This page explains. It does not replace the booking conditions, which are what applies if the two ever disagree.