Report on Territorial Impacts and Lessons Learnt of the Diffusion of Agro-ecological Farming Systems (AEFS) in the European Union
Abstract
The UNISECO project aims to provide recommendations on how the sustainability of agro-ecological farming systems (AEFS) in Europe can be promoted. In this deliverable D4.3, the results from a large-scale implementation of various agro-ecological approaches, from single practices such as undersowing in cereals to more systemic approaches, such as agroforestry, and to a full agro-ecological transformation of the agri-food system are presented. Based on the case-study results from WP3, various bundles of agro-ecological innovations have been identified in a multi-step stakeholder process. Suggested practices and approaches ranged from plot and farm-level to whole food-system level and a selection of those was then chosen for implementation in the two biophysical mass-flow models BioBaM_GHG_EU and SOLm. In BioBaM_GHG_EU, an option space of 432 options was built by combining several variants of a) more or less mixed-farming approaches integrating crop and livestock production; b) livestock diets (fully grass-based ruminant production); c) manure management (conventional, biogas digesters, etc.); d) hedges and undersowing on croplands; e) grassland use in a land sharing or land sparing variant with vegetation regrowth; d) reduced grassland use intensity in high nature value farmland. In SOLm, a detailed implementation of agroforestry systems was implemented, based on parameters from state-of-the-art literature, such as the different crops and trees varieties used and their…
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