The Farming for Biodiversity conference took place today 17th of October 2019 in Brussels. The conference was an opportunity to focus on result-based payment schemes (RBPS) for biodiversity achievements in agriculture, showcasing findings of three pilot projects from Ireland/Spain, Romania and the UK. It aims to facilitate a discussion among a broad range of policy-makers and implementers at all levels.
The 2nd Meeting of the CONSOLE project is taking place at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universieit Amsterdam.
Project partners have come together to discuss the developments of the project deliverables and the next steps. Potential case studies will be chosen as well as the characteristics of the contract solutions.
The European Conference on Crop Diversification took place from September 18th to 21st, 2019 in Budapest (Hungary). The meeting explored how we can achieve the full potential of crop system diversification to improve productivity, the provision of sustainable and resource-efficient ecosystem services and value chains.
The temporal and spatial diversification of crops through practices such as rotation, multiple cultivation and intercropping (mixing of species) constitute key pillars of the transition to Agroecology. However, diversified agricultural systems will only emerge if clear benefits can be demonstrated for farmers and society, value chains are fully compromised and crop diversification is backed by policies.
The conference focused on all scientific aspects of the diversification of agricultural and food systems, on the practical implementation of crop diversification in value chains and on policy-related issues. In particular, the conference will address the following topics:
Benefits and practical experiences of crop diversification
Incentives promote diversification along value chains – approaches to evaluate the performance of diversified cropping systems at various scales
Focuses that foster crop diversification and accompany actors when they transition to sustainable European systems
Political recommendations to make the systems more willing to diversify crops.