Climate Change Adaptability of cropping and Farming systems for Europe

Climate change (CC) is a great global concern. The project focuses on increasing the adaptive capacity to CC reducing potential variability of EU arable food production capacity. The objective is to contribute to support the restructuring of EU agriculture requiring co-design and assessment of innovative strategies based on locally appropriate management. A better local understanding of linkages between environmental conditions and management practices are needed to re-co-design and co-structure innovative strategies for increased adaptive and viable management options.
Recent findings indicate that the interactions among CC parameters like CO2, temperature and water can be substantial, and that the combined effects on the biological systems of several drivers of variable strength may not be predicted from experiments with only one factor. Multifactorial experiments are needed involving a larger set of main factors in order to better understand soil-plant effects.
In addition, appropriate levels, forms and timing of stakeholder involvement in these research processes must be explored in order to assure relevance and comprehensiveness of the knowledge base, as well as maximum impact and usefulness of results in relation to decision-making and implementation of adaptation strategies of the current socio-technical food production systems.
The project consist of 12 European Research Institutions: Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), France; Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany; Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), UK; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Sweden; Wageningen University (WU), The Netherlands; Roskilde university (RUC), Denmark; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), Switzerland; Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), Spain; University of Helsinki (UH), Finland; Swiss Federal government agriculture, food and environmental research organization (Agroscope), Switzerland; Nutrient
Management Institute (NMI), The Netherlands; Louis Bolk Institute (LBI), The Netherlands.