AGROECOLOGY

Background and Objective

In order to ensure food security despite the growing problems associated with climate change, the loss of biodiversity and declining soil quality, new concepts for food production are needed. In recent years, the concept of agroecology has become increasingly recognised in the scientific, agricultural and political spheres. The Horizon Europe partnership AGROECOLOGY brings together over 70 partner institutions across 26 EU Member States, Associated Countries, and Third Countries to advance the transition of existing farming systems towards greater sustainability and resilience.

The common goal of the Partnership is to promote sustainable, resource-efficient and climate-friendly agriculture under the term agroecology. The Partnership relies on an interdisciplinary scientific approach to agricultural, environmental and social sciences. In the long term, it envisions far-reaching changes in agricultural practices, value chains and business models to provide farmers with market opportunities while providing food to consumers.

The partnership is coordinated by Project Management Jülich (PtJ). From Germany, the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) are actively involved by supporting transnational research projects that are intended to advance the national transformation to agroecology. The Thünen Institute, the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology and the German Biomass Research Centre are involved from the scientific community in Germany.

The Thünen Institute is co-leading the participatory research to strengthen and integrate living labs and research infrastructures in agroecology (work package 7) and is strongly involved in the development and operationalisation of a framework for monitoring and evaluating agroecological transition (work package 5). In addition, the Thünen Institute contributes to capacity building for researchers and policy makers to strengthen dialogue and awareness on policy issues related to the transition to agroecology (work package 2).

Approach

The AGROECOLOGY partnership relies on a common vision whereby a broad stakeholder constellation teams up to unlock the transition to agroecology so that farming systems are made resilient, productive and prosperous, place-sensitive, as well as climate-, environment-, ecosystem-, biodiversity- and people-friendly by 2050.

It is based on the concept that we can address the challenges faced by the European agricultural sector through agroecology by bringing together farmers, researchers, and other relevant stakeholders to co-develop, test and monitor new practices, approaches and technologies in real-life contexts. Such a framework is typically adopted in living labs. The partnership will develop networks of living labs and research infrastructures to allow experimentation between practice and science at different levels in order to develop and enhance the concrete and place-based implementation of innovations. This approach will also provide knowledge- and evidence-based information about how to assess the potential performance and impacts of agroecological practices in both the short and the long-term. 

Further information about the project is available on our project website: https://www.agroecologypartnership.eu/

The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda is available at: https://www.agroecologypartnership.eu/s/SRIA_rev23-02-2023.pdf

The project is funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under grant agreement No. 101132349.