Colorful countryside fields

Diversification trough Rotation, Intercropping, Multiple Cropping, Promoted by Actors and Value Chains towards Sustainability

Project info

Project info

Project type

Horizon 2020

Startdatum

01/06/2017

Einddatum

31/05/2022

The overall goal of DiverIMPACTS is to realise the full potential of crop diversification through rotation, intercropping and multiple cropping, promoted by actors and value chains towards sustainability, by demonstrating clear technical, economic and environmental benefits for farmers, value chains and society and by providing rural actors with those key enablers and innovations that remove existing barriers and ensure actual uptake of combined benefits at farm, value chain and territory levels.

To reach its overall goal, the project will pursue and achieve the following scientific and technological objectives:

  • To demonstrate clear benefits of crop diversification at farm, value chain and territory levels
  • Characterise and quantify the technical, environmental and economic performance of crop diversification strategies through existing expertise and a set of field experiments (FEs) carried out in main biogeographical regions across Europe;
  • Demonstrate, through a range of multi-actor case studies (CSs), the potential of diversification of cropping systems to achieve improved productivity, delivery of ecosystem services and resource-efficient and sustainable value chains. Inagro and Bioforum accompagny two Flemish case studies: 'grain legumes intercropping with cereal in organic systems' and 'Crop diversification through inter-farms (arable-dairy) co-operation (vegetable, cereal, service crops).
  • To co-design technical and organisational innovations to stimulate crop diversification and co-learning
  • Create a crop diversification knowledge network of relevant actors, to share and valorise past, on-going and future experiences of crop diversification in order to identify key enablers to crop diversification and increase, in this way, awareness and knowledge/data exchanges among actors;
  • Adapt and expand existing multi-criteria assessment methods to the needs of actors to assess the technical, economic, ecological and social impacts of crop diversification at farm, value chain and territory levels.
  • To remove barriers and promote enablers to crop diversification at farm, value chain and territory levels
  • Deepen, for each case study and with local actors, the analysis of main lock-in effects to the adoption of crop diversification and identify technical innovations, organisation schemes and governance instruments that help remove barriers and promote enablers to crop diversification.
  • To develop comprehensive and long-term strategies and tools to sustain crop diversification
  • Stimulate at farm, value chain and territory levelsinnovation processes simultaneously for all actors of the sociotechnical system (farming, advisory, education, value chain, policy) and develop a practical and dynamic toolbox to sustain transition towards crop diversification;
  • Disseminate outputs through existing channels, targeting farmers, value chain actors and society and build up recommendations and roadmap for policy-makers.

Partners

Financiers

H2020

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