DiverIMPACTS meeting in Alnarp, Sweden

Partners reported their progress in the individual work packages, and numerous workshops were held, such as “Assessing the performances of diversified systems in case studies and field experiments to support their dynamics, interactions and evolutions”, “successful crop diversification experiences”, and “how to write a practice abstract”.

In the Horizon 2020 programme, all projects are asked to submit so-called practice abstracts, in which key findings and experiences are summarized for end-users. At the practice abstract workshop, partners assessed the first DiverIMPACTS practice abstracts and made many useful suggestions on how they can be improved. Furthermore, partners made outlines for 20 additional practice abstracts, which are expected to be finalized within the next months, focussing on a wide range of themes and experiences from the DiverIMPACTS project.

Diverfarming (Crop diversification and low-input farming across Europe: from practitioners engagement and ecosystems services to increased revenues and chain organisation) is another Horizon 2020 project, which is closely linked to DiverIMPACTS. Roberta Farina from the Italian Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA) presented the project, and she showed areas for collaboration between the two projects, for instance: the measures implemented in the field experiments, the indicators, tools and multi-criteria assessments, the value chain and economic analyses, as well as policy aspects.

The partners had the opportunity to visit an organic farm near Alnarp, which is part of the case study 19 on local legumes. It addresses collaboration within the whole value chain, with innovative ways of crop diversification. The project partners furthermore visited SLU’s Lönnstorp Research Station and DiverIMPACTS field experiment 6 on arable cropping systems, which explores the use of cover crops and high value cash crops and options for intercropping at both the cash crop and cover crop level.

Another important DiverIMPACTS event is the European Conference on Crop Diversification, which will be held on September 18 to 21 in Budapest, Hungary. It is being organized by the crop diversification cluster, which is made up of six H2020 projects: DiverIMPACTS, Diverfarming, DIVERSify, Legvalue, ReMIX, and TRUE. The conference, to which 180 papers were submitted, will have several workshops on how to advance in crop diversification in European Agriculture. The early bird registration fee is available until June 20, 2019.