H2020 Project Updates

H2020

PROJECT UPDATES

Agri Capture

This project is focused around promoting regenerative agriculture and developing markets for carbon credits. It will offer four services; quantification, explore, support, and verification, all of which will involve key stakeholders including farmers, businesses, agri-food coops and many more. LEAF Demonstration Farmer, Duncan Farrington and LEAF Innovation Centre, The Allerton Project are also partners in this project alongside LEAF. We will all be involved in developing an engagement strategy for farmers and businesses, offering training opportunities within regenerative agriculture, and assessing the potential of a carbon standard for assurance schemes. Additionally, Duncan is one of the project’s five case studies to evidence the services Agri Capture will offer.

SolACE

SolACE is in its final year journey of finding solutions for improved agroecosystem and crop efficiency for water and nutrient use. The project is designing solutions that combine novel genotypes and crop innovations on a range of crops including Durham wheat and potatoes across climatic regions of Europe. LEAF alongside the University of Newcastle is leading the UK farmer network, trialling the use of microbial inoculants on their effectiveness to water and nutrient stress. Check out the next issue of the IFM bulletin for the report on our findings of the 2020 trials and our plans for 2021.

DIVERSify

This H2020 funded project, led by LEAF Innovation Centre, the James Hutton Institute, is in its final stages of its four-year journey and has seen the design of innovative plant teams for ecosystem resilience and agricultural sustainability across Europe by identifying the mechanisms and traits for optimised plant teams. The project has seen many successes and legacies including an intercropping decision aid tool and LEAF’s very own Speak Out Tool Kit. If you would like to know how intercropping can help achieve European green deal ambitions please join us for the DIVERSify & ReMIX joint conference on 23rd March register here.

This five-year H2020 project looks at integrating biodiversity with farming practices to establish working demonstrations of quantifiable practices that reconcile production and biodiversity conservation. LEAF and the University of Reading will shortly start working with a group of around 15 arable farmers to co-develop novel ideas that benefit both farmers and wildlife. Two successful workshops were recently hosted that brought a number of farmers together who were interested in the project including many familiar faces from our LEAF Network. There are various levels of involvement possible in this project and the experience from the LEAF Network will be an invaluable addition, especially in the co-design process which offers opportunities to co-author research publications as well as co-design the biodiversity intervention and sampling methods.

DiverIMPACTS

DiverIMPACTS is a H2020 funded project, led by INRAE, and is a sister project to DIVERSify assessing diversification through rotation, intercropping, multiple cropping promoted by actors and value chain sustainability. Crop diversification has the potential to produce many benefits such as improved soil nutrient concentrations and soil fertility but comes with several challenges. LEAF alongside FiBL has led the task of reporting on the success stories of crop diversification across Europe featuring LEAF Demonstration Farmer, Duncan Farrington, and his success of combined rotation, cover crops and companion cropping. Check out Duncan’s and other European farmers success in crop diversification here.

SEAMS

SEAMS is an Esmee Fairbairn Foundation funded project coordinated by the James Hutton Institute. The project focusses on crop mixtures and aims to develop, promote and implement crop species mixtures as a sustainable crop production system for Scotland and as a resource for knowledge exchange on food production, agricultural ecology and environmental sustainability. Barriers and enablers on the uptake of crop mixtures were investigated as part of workshop LEAF hosted in 2019 with farmers and advisors in Fife sharing ideas about crop mixtures and farmer’s experiences of establishing, growing and harvesting them. Growing two crops simultaneously offers a range of potential benefits from soil conditioning to pest control but mixtures must be well-designed and closely managed. At this workshop we discussed what works, what doesn’t, what the opportunities are as well as barriers which included the lack of end use opportunities.

Look out for an extended LEAF Surgery this autumn where we will be discussing the potential end use opportunities for crop mixtures, from home grown proteins to distilling.