The NUTRI-CHECK NET project has performed a comprehensive review of crop nutrition recommendation systems, tools and services that aim to support nutrition decisions along with the research evidence available to support such tools and recommendations. Together with the results obtained through the stakeholder surveys, interviews and workshops, the project has ascertained what the needs, and barriers are for farmers and advisors, which prevents the adoption of such tools on-farm (D1.2). The review has compiled information that now acts as the basis for a comprehensive inventory, which seeks to showcase the most effective crop nutrition decision tools and solutions, and the prioritization framework, which involved contributions from stakeholders across the network was pivotal in generating a sub-set of 50 tools for evaluation by the CNC members (D2.2).
Compiling recommendation systems for N,P,K across nine European countries has provided a baseline understanding of the current state of play, and acts as an important knowledge base for defining improvements, which in turn will help shape policy developments later in the project. The characterization of these recommendation systems will be presented in D2.3.
A CBA will be conducted in the coming months of the project. The initial phase of the CBA has already began, through design of the surveys (T3.2) which will be utilised by CNC facilitators to obtain information covering provenance & confidence, capital costs, operational costs, cost savings/revenue generated, operational savings, as well as holistic considerations such as environmental and social costs/benefits. This CBA will consider economic feasibility and environmental benefits of the selected crop nutrition decision tools, which will create valuable insights for policy makers, researchers and practitioners. As the project progresses, the findings from the CBA will be disseminated to a broader audience, which will include targeted efforts to reach stakeholders through various channels, ensuring that widespread awareness and understanding of the benefits of such tools is generated. Additionally, the CBA will be fundamental in shaping the 20 NUTRI-CHECK NET Best Practices which will be initiated in Task 3.3 and further developed through co-creation processes with the NUTRI-CHECK NETwork members in T1.4.
