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Developing Intercropping for agrifood Value chains and Ecosystem Services delivery in Europe and Southern countries

Project description

New knowledge and tools for intercrop management

A growing number of farmers are opting for intercropping practices, cultivating two or more crops on the same field at the same time. The approach is considered sustainable, eco-friendly and potentially economically sound. However, it is not without challenges. The EU-funded IntercropValueES project will design and develop intercropping systems that can be managed in ways that ensure productivity and profitability along the entire agrifood chain. Bringing together scientists, farmers and actors representing food value chains from 14 countries (on 3 continents) and from different organisations and stakeholders, the project will work on 13 co-innovation case studies. The aim is to design locally relevant and innovative agrifood chains. Project findings will be used to improve methods and tools for intercrop management.

Objective

IntercropValueES aims to exploit benefits of intercropping to design and manage productive, diversified, resilient, profitable, environmentally friendly cropping systems acceptable to farmers and actors in the agri-food chain. It will develop both a scientific research action for better understanding and modelling intimate intercrop functioning and a detailed analysis of lock-ins and levers at the value chain level to identify credible solutions that can be adopted by farmers and value chain actors. As a multi-disciplinary and multi-actor project, it brings together scientists and local actors representing food value chain. It includes 27 participants from 15 countries (3 continents) from a wide diversity of organizations and stakeholders. IntercropValuES organizes its activities in 6 objectives, to: 1) support the design of locally relevant, legitimate and innovative agri-food chains, through 13 Co-Innovation Case Studies; 2) understand the functioning and G*G*E*M interactions allowing the selection of compatible ideotypes and the optimization of machinery and management strategies for maximizing the productivity and delivery of ecosystem services with better soil health and mitigation of GHG (meta experiment 15 sites); 3) produce novel information, improved methods and tools for intercrop management and the assessment of their performance and profitability; 4) unravel intercropping performance by modelling; 5) analyze grain and sanitary quality of cereal-legume intercrops, functional qualities for food processing and new products, 6) uncover key barriers and levers at the value chain level to boost development, and identify new market avenues and solutions to increase economic added-value of intercrops. The Comms and Dissemination Plan is designed to diffuse outcomes widely by adapted channels to different end-users, such as farmers, advisors, food processing companies and machinery industries, retailers and citizens, academia, policymakers and influence bodies.

Coordinator

CENTRE DE COOPERATION INTERNATIONALE EN RECHERCHE AGRONOMIQUE POUR LEDEVELOPPEMENT - C.I.R.A.D. EPIC
Net EU contribution
€ 1 452 232,75
Address
RUE SCHEFFER 42
75016 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost
€ 1 452 232,75

Participants (22)

Partners (4)