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WP2. The new Catalogue of Practices tool was published on the AGROMIX website. This catalogue gives an overview of the whole AGROMIX case study catalogue dataset and offers to filter for different categories, to select and search for cases matching the search criteria. Try the tool here.
WP3. The 92-page Deliverable 3.1 “Climate resilience: from concept to practice” was submitted in October 2023. It presents the framing and methodology of Task 3.1 (Quantification of biophysical indicators of agroecosystem resilience to climate change) and Task 3.2 (Identification of resilient combinations of MF/AF to adapt to climate change) The document is available here.
Within Task 3.1 “Quantification of biophysical indicators of agroecosystem resilience to climate change” all field experiments have been completed. In particular, the data analyses of the livestock experiments and biodiversity samplings are well advanced with diverse manuscripts being either already submitted or in preparation. The biophysical modelling and virtual experiments with Yield-SAFE, Hi-sAFe and GBRN are ongoing.
Task 3.3 “Development of future scenarios of land use / resilience strategies” started in May 2022 and includes a spatial approach to up-scaling to identify target areas in Europe where resilient and climate-smart mixed farming (MF) and agroforestry (AF) systems should have high priority for introduction and a non-spatial approach, i.e. an iterative expert knowledge-based Delphi method. The Delphi’s third and last round is about to close before the end of this year.
Task 3.4 "Development of guidelines for climate resilient land management" started in November 2023.
WP5. Here are some key findings from three case studies — in Italy, Germany and the UK — due to be published in full in an upcoming report. The case studies show that local context is key in determining economic performance and policy conditions necessary to achieve uptake of agroforestry and mixed farming. They also revealed some of the positive environmental impacts (using LCA criteria) of adopting these farming approaches.
All three case studies demonstrated that the feasibility of increasing AF/MF was heavily reliant on policy funding. In the Italian and German case studies, AF/MF measures had positive effects on environment health indicators. In Italy, AF/MF measures impacted land use and eutrophication the most. In Germany, wood replaced fossil fuel energy and, in some cases, led to systems having a negative emission balance.
The UK case study took a policy-led approach (net-zero emission), therefore the local impact on climate was pre-determined. However, this reduction in agricultural production in the UK needs to be compensated by increased production elsewhere, in this study the US. Climate change and land use were considered as the only indicators. They showed that the impact is highly dependent on the assumptions:
Best case: Timber from the UK is used as fuel wood which replaces fossil fuels & increased need for production in the US is achieved by converting grassland. Result: The climate change impact reduction is very favourable and including the indirect effects from increased production in the US can be nearly completely compensated (98% impact reduction). Some 33% land use impact reduction.
Worst case: Wood replaces other energy sources, e.g. solar or wind, and the additional need for agricultural area is met by deforestation. Result: The climate change impact is only reduced by 10% and the land use impact is increased instead of reduced.
WP6. AGROMIX is now active Zenodo. Hosted by the European Organisation CERN, this online open repository offers a wide range of research papers, data sets, and reports. We have created a community to gather the project’s publications, accessible here. If you are already using Zenodo, you can submit your publications by researching “AGROMIX” in the communities available.
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