The Project “Crop diversification and low-input farming across Europe: from practitioners’ engagement and ecosystems services to increased revenues and chain organisation (DIVERFARMING)”, funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme under the societal challenge “Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy”, came to an end last October.
The main objective of the DIVERFARMING project has been to promote the diversification of farming systems in order to increase the resilience, sustainability and economic benefit of the European agricultural sector in the medium and long term. The project, led and coordinated by the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, has been funded with 10 million euros and has lasted 66 months. A total of 25 teams from research groups, private companies and agricultural organisations from 8 European countries have participated in the project. Aragon was represented by the Aula Dei Experimental Station (EEAD-CSIC) and Gallicum Sociedad Cooperativa Aragonesa.
The EEAD-CSIC team, coordinated by Jorge Álvaro-Fuentes, and in which Carmen Castañeda del Álamo and José Luis Arrúe Ugarte have also participated, has worked actively in the programmed activities on crop diversification in extensive production systems in Aragon, analysing alternatives to monoculture in both rainfed and irrigated systems. The team has been in charge of assessing the impact of diversification both on crop production and quality and on soil health and ecosystem services. In addition, the EEAD-CSIC has led work package number 3 on “Crop Production and Quality”, in which fourteen short- and long-term field experiments (case studies) were set up in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary and Finland, with the aim of evaluating the effects of diversification in different climates, soils and cropping systems in Europe.
General information on the DIVERFARMING project and its main results (reports, publications, books, etc.) can be found on the project website (http://www.diverfarming.eu/) or on the CORDIS service of the European Commission (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/728003). The documentary “Diverfarming. The diversity revolution”, in which European researchers and farmers tell the experience of their participation in the project, premiered in Cordoba in November 2022:
