Steering organic farming transition

Project Information

SOFT

Grant agreement ID: 890874

DOI

10.3030/890874

Project closed

EC signature date 9 April 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 August 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 187 572,48

EU contribution

€ 187 572,48

Coordinated by

KONINKLIJKE NEDERLANDSE AKADEMIE VAN WETENSCHAPPEN - KNAW
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SOFT (Steering organic farming transition)

Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2022-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Approximately 38 percent of the land in the world is used for agriculture purposes, and less than 2 % is used for organic farming. The Netherlands has more than half of their total surface covered with agricultural land but only around 3% is organic. Organic agriculture is expected to cause fewer negative effects on the environment, soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. One of the reasons is that farmers are not allowed to use many of the most harmful agrochemicals. However, there are reasons for which farmers do not want to convert from conventional to organic farming. One of the main reasons basically is because organic farming typically produces lower yields, particularly in early years after conversion.
This project SOFT (Steering organic Farming Transition) aims to contribute towards shortening the transition period from conventional farming to a more organic type of farming that maintains high crop yields while having less negative environmental impacts. This will be achieved by understanding the role of soil microbial biodiversity and soil microbial network configuration in driving the functioning of sustainable agroecosystems. This will also be achieved by investigating the role of whole-soil inoculation to drive the fast conversion to high-yield organic farms.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

My MSCA-IF “SOFT” (Steering Organic Farming Transition) from the career restart (CAR) panel aimed to study the role of soil networks involving microbial communities for biogeochemical processes related to the sustainable functioning of agroecosystems. During the project, I mainly focused on how contrasting farming practices (for example, conventional vs. organic management, and crop rotation diversification) affected soil coupling networks and microbial functioning, particularly soil enzymes. For this, I collected information across a chronosequence of conversion from conventional to organic agriculture in the Netherlands (as part of the “Vital Soils” project led by my supervisor Prof. Wim H. van der Putten) and from a field manipulation experiment in the US (Kellogg Field Station, Michigan). Moreover, I also carried out an inoculation experiment in the lab under controlled conditions to test the potential of whole-soil inoculants obtained from the “Vital Soils” chronosequence to aid in the conversion from conventional to organic agriculture.
My results from the Vital Soils chronosequence showed that Carbon cycling-related enzymes are higher in organic fields, and that this effect increased with time since conversion. My results from the Kellogg experiment showed that treatments showing more tightly coupled soil networks are those correlate with higher soil functioning. Thus, identifying pathways of soil microbial community interactions disruptions may help to improve the functioning of agroecosystems.
SOFT's communication goal was to target different audiences and increase public awareness of the importance of fast conversion of conventional agricultural systems obtained from high-producing organic farmlands to aid in this transition. The results of this research are relevant to a broad scientific community, including those with interests in the conversion from conventional to organic agriculture, soil biodiversity, community ecology and ecological networks.
The results from my research have been disseminated in conferences, international workshop and academic sector. Currently there are also two manuscripts in progress to submit to peer-review scientific journals. Exploitation of research results SOFT laid the foundation of agricultural programs aimed at favoring the sustainability of food, feed and bioenergy production with minimal biodiversity and functioning losses. Identifying soil microbial groups that are key for soil network coupling and functioning allowed me to start a novel research program aimed at synthetically recreating key connections for the fast transition of conventional to organic agriculture.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

This project drawn together fundamental ecological theory, state-of-the-art knowledge on PSF, soil biodiversity and ecological networks, and cutting-edge techniques in data analysis and high-throughput sequencing to understand the transition from conventional agro-ecosystems to high-yield organic ones.
It is increasingly acknowledged that enhancing the sustainability of agriculture will require a transformation of the soil and its associated biota, as they play a major role in how energy and materials from soils are transferred to crops through their control of nutrient cycling. These microbes live in close association with the rhizosphere, the thin layer of soil around the roots. This close association results in a high degree of co-occurrence, also named ‘coupling’. Paradigmatic examples of the importance of coupled connections between keystone soil organisms and plants through complex interaction networks involve mycorrhizal fungi and plant-growth promoting bacteria (PGPRs), which are key for plant nutrition, defence against pathogens and stress tolerance. By revealing how soil networks relate to functioning in agroecosystems, SOFT resulted in a major advancement compared to previous efforts to understand the transition from conventional to organic systems and may serve as a baseline for downstream manipulation studies.
The impact of this research is of high relevance for both the primary productivity sector (agri-food companies and farmers) and for the scientific community (basic and applied research). This project tested the novel hypothesis that the transition from conventional to high-yield organic agroecosystems is allowed due to the regeneration of tightly coupled soil networks that may allow for a more efficient C uptake and transfer of energy and matter through the entire system.

Linking soil microbial community to soil functioning

SOFT (Steering Organic Farming Transition) Conceptual figure