SOFT · Steering organic farming transition
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-09-01 → 2022-08-31
- EU contribution
- €187,572
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Steering organic farming transition
Approximately 38 percent of the land in the world is used for agriculture purposes, and less than 2 % is used for organic farming. The Netherlands has more than half of their total surface covered with agricultural land but only around 3% is organic. Organic agriculture is expected to cause fewer negative effects on the environment, soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. One of the reasons is that farmers are not allowed to use many of the most harmful agrochemicals. However, there are reasons for which farmers do not want to convert from conventional to organic farming. One of the main reasons basically is because organic farming typically produces lower yields, particularly in early years after conversion. This project SOFT (Steering organic Farming Transition) aims to contribute towards shortening the transition period from conventional farming to a more organic type of farming that maintains high crop yields while having less negative environmental impacts. This will be achieved by understanding the role of soil microbial biodiversity and soil microbial network configuration in driving the functioning of sustainable agroecosystems. This will also be achieved by investigating the role of whole-soil inoculation to drive the fast conversion to high-yield organic farms.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
A key challenge for sustainable intensification of agriculture is to reduce hunger and poverty by producing increasing amounts of food, feed, and bioenergy for a growing world population, but with minimal loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In intensive conventional farming systems yields are high, but soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are often reduced, and soil food webs are simplified. Organic farming provides a more environmentally sustainable alternative, but it typically produces lower yields, particularly in early years after conversion. In SOFT (Steering Organic Farming Transition), I will test if soil inoculation may be a promising tool to speed up the transition from high-yield conventional to high-yield organic agriculture and can help to overcome ‘soil legacy effects’ due to impoverished soil communities. First, I will use a chronosequence of farmers’ fields throughout The Netherlands that have been converted from conventional to organic farming to study the role that the structure of soil networks may have in soil functioning. Then, I will use soil collected from these sites to test the potential of soil inoculation to aid the transition of soil communities and coupling of soil networks in organic farming systems. By revealing the potential of whole soil inoculation to regenerate soil networks, and how soil networks relate to functioning in agroecosystems, SOFT will be a ground-breaking advancement compared to current efforts to understand the transition from conventional to organic systems and may serve as a baseline for downstream manipulation studies in which certain soil communities may be engineered as inoculants to steer and speed-up this transition. Taken together, SOFT will contribute to establish new management practices that may help to shorten the transition period from conventional farming to a more organic type of farming that maintains high crop yields while having less negative environmental impacts.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- KONINKLIJKE NEDERLANDSE AKADEMIE VAN WETENSCHAPPEN - KNAW · AMSTERDAMCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union