The project is designed to complement the IPM Decisions project and is being coordinated by Nicolas Munier-Jolain from France’s INRAE. Nicolas is no stranger to ENDURE and the project will see a number of ENDURE’s partners work together. These comprise the United Kingdom’s James Hutton Institute, Denmark’s Aarhus University, Germany’s Julius Kühn Institute and Italy’s Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. Other countries involved in the project include Belgium, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland.

The project will be seeking to build a network of farmers across the European Union which is capable of demonstrating and promoting the adoption of IPM strategies, relying on knowledge exchange and peer-to-peer learning.

IPMWORKS explains that the EU’s ambitious target of reducing pesticide use by 50% over the coming decade, coupled with Directive 2009/128/EC on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides and the introduction of National Action Plans, means reducing pesticide use will be a top priority across the continent with farmers at the forefront of this transformation.

IPMWORKS notes: “Pioneer farmers throughout Europe are already testing and implementing advanced IPM strategies with success, managing to perform well with a low reliance on pesticides. The challenge for European agriculture is to broaden this group and promote a more general adoption of advanced IPM strategies. The IPMWORKS project aims to achieve this goal by sharing ‘success stories’, organising peer-to-peer knowledge exchange activities, promote farm demonstration, and train farmers and advisors on IPM. These have proved, in the past, to be powerful dissemination tools.

“IPMWORKS will coordinate existing networks which are already in the field promoting advanced IPM strategies, and will also launch new hubs of farms in regions or sectors where IPM pioneers are not yet engaged in a relevant network. Farmers, advisors, policy makers, consumers and other key actors in Europe will be involved in the project, showing that IPM-based strategies, adopted in real farms across a diversity of production systems, reduce the reliance on pesticides and minimise human exposure. The project will demonstrate that IPM can maintain or improve on-farm economic profitability and reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture.”

The project adds that it will be working at a number of levels (from farm to regional, national and EU scales) and with a variety of stakeholders (farmers, advisors and other innovation actors) to ensure the European Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy become a reality.

For more information:

• Complete the survey in English (click flag for access):
  IPMWorks - Resource Toolbox Survey_English [pdf - 126,29 kB]
• Complete the survey in French (click flag for access):
  IPMWorks - Resource Toolbox Survey_Français [pdf - 197,48 kB]
• Complete the survey in Italian (click flag for access):
  IPMWorks - Resource Toolbox Survey_Italian [pdf - 126,56 kB]
• Visit the IPMWORKS website
• Visit the IPM Decisions website
• Contact the coordinator: Nicolas Munier-Jolain