Europe is moving towards climate-smart, biodiversity-friendly farming and a more resilient food system. Legumes can play a key role: they fix nitrogen, improve soils, support biodiversity and pollinators, and reduce fertiliser use and emissions. Yet they occupy only a small share of European farmland—around 2% for grain legumes and less than 6% when forage legumes are included—because their benefits are undervalued and farmers face agronomic and market barriers. LEGENDARY addresses this gap by generating measurable evidence of legume ecosystem services (ESs) and co-creating adoption pathways with farmers and value-chain actors.
LEGENDARY is a four-year Horizon Europe project testing annual and perennial legumes across Europe. Through multi-location (ML) and on-farm trials in contrasting climates, it collects comparable data on yield, resilience and ESs.
LEGENDARY aims to:
1) Quantify ESs. LEGENDARY develops methods to turn field data into indicators usable by farmers, advisers and policy makers. These will feed into an upgraded, user-friendly decision support system (DSS).
2) De-risk and diversify farming. Trials on intercropping, undersowing, rotations and perennial systems test how legumes enhance nitrogen cycles, soil functions, pest and disease control, erosion prevention, greenhouse-gas reduction and pollination. Mapping rhizobial biodiversity and nitrogen fixation identifies best options per region.
3) Strengthen value chains. By linking field data with life-cycle and cost–benefit analyses, the project benchmarks EU-grown legumes against imports and identifies where ESs create farm and market value.
4) Accelerate uptake. Using a multi-actor approach, including living labs and field demonstrations, the project builds farmer-centred learning so practices and tools can be applied rapidly and at scale.
LEGENDARY’s impact:
• Knowledge and tools (short-term):ML experiments generate harmonised datasets on legume performance and ESs, feeding into models and a DSS.
• Co-creation (medium-term): Engagement with farmers, advisers and industry converts results into practical guidance, supporting EU strategies such as the Green Deal, Farm to Fork and the Soil Deal.
• Adoption (long-term): The DSS and recommendations enable wider uptake of legume systems, reducing fertiliser use, emissions and risk while improving biodiversity and resilience.
Fully integrated role of social sciences and humanities:
They assess cultural and recreational values of legume landscapes, study drivers of adoption, design regional surveys and co-create policy recommendations. This ensures technical results are matched by social acceptance, economic feasibility and policy uptake.
Scale and significance:
LEGENDARY aims to unlock the full value of legumes for European agriculture. Expected impacts include better soils, lower emissions, improved water and air quality, stronger biodiversity, more stable farm incomes and less reliance on imported protein—contributing to EU climate and food-system goals.
