Six of the European Commission’s H2020 projects have joined forces in a ‘crop diversification cluster’ which will involve sharing strategies and tools with the aim of boosting the impact of their research into various ways of improving the economic and environmental sustainability of European agriculture.
The six projects, which include various ENDURE partners, are: Diverfarming, DIVERSify, ReMix, LEGVALUE, DiverIMPACTS and TRUE. The Diverfarming website reports that DIVERSify and ReMix are examining the benefits of species diversity in cropping systems and how the combinations of species can improve pest control, productivity and resilience. TRUE and LEGVALUE are focused on transitions towards sustainable legume-based agricultural systems, which will require more efficient use of land, water, nutrients and energy. DiverIMPACTS and Diverfarming are working on the creation of diversified cropping systems for food and feed alongside industrial projects seeking to achieve the full potential of diversification to improve productivity and efficiency all through value chains.
Diverfarming reports: “...representatives of the six projects studied the way to work on common aspects, agreeing to share tasks regarding the communication and diffusion of events in order to thus reach more people. The transfer of information, materials, methods and results among the different projects also enables the scope of the study to be broadened and to reach more certain and elaborated conclusions that will serve to increase the global impact of taking crop diversification on board by the European agriculture sector.”
The website adds: “By this association it is hoped that innovative solutions will be obtained, backed up by a network of field experiments that cover the majority of Europe, multicriteria assessment tools that show the yield of the crop diversification both environmentally as well as economically, and finally an economic and organisational approach that serves to promote business models built on crop diversification.
“The common work of these groups will also generate recommendations in agricultural matters that will influence the construction of the common agricultural policy, in the form of tools that help to face up to the problems posed by today’s agriculture.”
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