The five-year, 34-partner project was launched in June 2017 and has included multi-actor case studies across Europe and field experiments. The 25 case studies were divided into five clusters: service crops, crop diversification under adverse conditions, crop diversification in systems from Western Europe, diversification through intercropping with a special focus on grain legumes, and diversification of vegetable cropping systems.

The conference organisers say that at the event the “DiverIMPACTS team will demonstrate what the project has achieved and involve stakeholder communities in the development of the next steps”. Specifically, the conference will:

• Illustrate the system approaches carried out by DiverIMPACTS at the case study level
• Highlight the levers offered by cropping systems diversification
• Promote multi-actor research and the systems approach

The organisers say the goal of the conference is to take these outcomes a step further and pave the way forward for a transition towards more sustainable agri-food systems.

The project has also put online two new videos. One examines agroecological transitions in France’s Syppre project, which was launched by three French field crop institutes in 2015. These institutes - Arvalis Institut du Végétal, Terres Inovia and ITB - are also DiverIMPACTS partners and the video explains the work being conducted and the lessons learned from five years’ of studying innovative diversified cropping systems, with a particular focus on establishment, fertility and weed management.

A second video focuses on growing energy catch crops (ECC) in Béarn, south-west France. Here, researchers have introduced a maize-soybean succession into what had been maize monocropping systems. They have been studying the technical, economic and environmental aspects of such a change, with a focus on keeping the change as simple as possible.

“When markets and selling prices are attractive, the net margin on annual production is increased,” they report. “More generally, the establishment of a cover crop offers many environmental benefits.”

For more information:

• Visit the DiverIMPACTS website