ENABLING CROP DIVERSIFICATION TO SUPPORT TRANSITIONS TOWARD MORE SUSTAINABLE EUROPEAN AGRIFOOD SYSTEMS

Highlights

• Crop diversification is a dynamic pathway towards sustainable agrifood systems.

• Technological and institutional barriers restrict uptake of crop diversification.

• More coordination and cooperation among agrifood system stakeholders is required.

• The European Crop Diversification Cluster calls for multiactor networks.

Abstract

European cropping systems are often characterized by short rotations or even monocropping, leading to environmental issues such as soil degradation, water eutrophication, and air pollution including greenhouse gas emissions, that contribute to climate change and biodiversity loss. The use of diversification practices (i.e., intercropping, multiple cropping including cover cropping and rotation extension), may help enhance agrobiodiversity and deliver ecosystem services while developing new value chains. Despite its benefits, crop diversification is hindered by various technical, organizational, and institutional barriers along value chains (input industries, farms, trading and processing industries, retailers, and consumers) and within sociotechnical systems (policy, research, education, regulation and advisory). Six EU-funded research projects have joined forces to boost crop diversification by creating the European Crop Diversification Cluster (CDC). This Cluster aggregates research, innovation, commercial and citizen-focused partnerships to identify and remove barriers across the agrifood system and thus enables the uptake of diversification measures by all European value-chain stakeholders. The CDC will produce a typology of barriers, develop tools to accompany actors in their transition, harmonize the use of multicriteria assessment indicators, prepare policy recommendations and pave the way for a long-term network on crop diversification.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

crop rotation / lock-in / intercropping / multiple cropping / networking

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Acknowledgements

The projects involved in the Cluster have received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement Nos. 728003 (Diverfarming), 727482 (DiverIMPACTS), 727284 (DIVERSify), 727217 (ReMIX), 727672 (LegValue) and 727973 (TRUE), and by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) under contract number 17.00092.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Antoine Messéan, Loïc Viguier, Lise Paresys, Jean-Noël Aubertot, Stefano Canali, Pietro Iannetta, Eric Justes, Alison Karley, Beatrix Keillor, Laura Kemper, Frédéric Muel, Barbara Pancino, Didier Stilmant, Christine Watson, Helga Willer, and Raúl Zornoza declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2021. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)