Analysing fossil-energy dependence in agriculture to increase resilience against input price fluctuations

Proposals should:

• Use foresight methods to elaborate scenarios of fossil energy and mineral fertiliser use evolution and dependence. Where available, reference scenarios of the European Commission (DG ENER) should be used to advance the state of the art;
• Improve the capacity of models to take into account direct and indirect energy uses and prices;
• Cover both macro and micro levels in the analysis. At the micro-economic level linkages should be established with the Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN) under development by the European Commission;
• Develop tools to support farmers’ decision-making for optimal use of energy and mineral fertiliser, to improve economic, environmental and climate performance of farming systems.

This topic should involve the effective contribution of SSH disciplines.

Projects shall leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud, as well as data from relevant Data Spaces in the data-driven analyses.

The possible participation of the JRC in the project would ensure that the approach proposed is compatible with and improves the tools used at the European Commission.