A new European project has been launched to ‘develop and support ecologically, economically and socially sustainable crop production via stacking and protection of functional biodiversity’. Called EcoStack, the five-year Horizon 2020 project brings together 24 partners, including a handful of ENDURE partners who are leading three of the work packages.
The EcoStack website reports: “Agriculture has to face the great challenge of balancing the demand for high productivity, imposed by the global increase of human population, with environmental impacts and social acceptability of new production strategies. EcoStack will develop ecologically, economically and socially sustainable crop production strategies via stacking of biodiversity service providers and bio-inspired tools for crop protection, within and around agricultural fields, in order [to] enhance sustainability of food production systems across Europe.”
It adds: “EcoStack will use transdisciplinary research methods and will promote active participation of multi-actor groups across Europe in order to create new knowledge, transfer the know-how, co-design new cropping systems, and use stakeholder-guided development of new agricultural concepts for generating economic and ecological benefits for farmers, biodiversity and society.”
The project’s kick-off meeting took place in late October at the University of Napoli ‘Federico ll’, Italy, with more than 50 participants attending to plan EcoStack’s development over the coming five years.
EcoStack has identified four major objectives:
Of the ENDURE participants taking part, the UK’s Rothamsted Research is leading the work package linking crop yields with off-crop functional biodiversity, Denmark’s Aarhus University is heading the work package dealing with the integrative modelling of multiple drivers for ecosystem service providers and Germany’s Julius Kühn Institute is managing the work on the social and economic aspects of enhancing functional biodiversity.
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