Horizon Europe: Developing Intercropping for agrifood Value chains and Ecosystem Services delivery in Europe and Southern countries

The goal of IntercropValueES is to exploit the benefits of intercropping to design productive, diversified, resilient, profitable and environmentally friendly agro-ecological cropping systems less dependent on external inputs than current systems and acceptable to farmers and actors in the agri-food chain. This goal includes analysing the conditions needed to increase yield and economic performance, but also soil health and ecosystem services (ES), as indicators of the value of intercropping. IntercropValueES will then develop a detailed analysis of lock-ins and levers at the value chain level in order to identify credible solutions that can be adopted by farmers and actors of the value chain. The project will implement a participative and multi-actor approach to overcome such barriers and lock-ins identified by the key actors of the local value-chain by providing multiple services of intercropping.