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In a nutshell

Innovative soil management practices (SMP) and agricultural systems are promoted to enhance ecosystem services in order to minimise soil threats and sustain agriculture in a climate change context. A comprehensive stocktake of SMPs and their ability to succeed on multiple goals, agricultural production, ecosystem services, biogeochemical cycles, is missing. By using a surveying approach, i-SoMPE will aim to documents innovative SMP. The data gathered will be synthesized considering technical and ecological constrains and socio-economic barriers. Context-specific thematic maps will be provided to guide farmers, researchers and policy makers to suitable SMP for climate-smart agriculture. i-Sompe is part the European Joint Programme Cofund on Agricultural Soil Management (EJP SOIL).

Context

The agricultural sector is a major user of natural resources and has a complex relationship with the environment. It plays an important role in land use patterns across Europe, with grassland and cropland making together 42% of total land cover (Source:Eurostat, 2018 via ec.europa.eu). Since the late 1950s, the advances in agronomy, genetics, and chemistry significantly specialized European farming systems by relying on a few improved high-yielding species. However, the strong simplification and intensification of European farming systems miss the goals of sustainability and environmental quality such as groundwater pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, and reduction of agroecosystem services.

Soil management is a corner stone of farming systems and has a pivotal role between a cultivated ecosystem on the one hand and a technical, social and economic system on the other hand (Figure 1). Soil acts as a buffer for water resources and for maintaining nutrient cycles, its fertility and health has always had a direct influence on the productivity of food and farming systems.

Since the second half of XXth century, new issues are challenging the sustainability of contemporary farming systems. Considering their central position, soils and their management have been identified as having a crucial role for:

  • Climate change mitigation (carbon sequestration)
  • Climate change adaptation (resilient farming systems)
  • Sustainable agricultural production and other eco-system services (e.g. water regulation)

Therefore, the adoption of low-input and innovative SMP (e.g. reducing tillage intensity, organic and mixed fertilization, crop residue management, and optimizing water use efficiency for irrigated systems), crop diversification associations (e.g. rotation, intercropping, and multiple cropping) and more general innovative farming practices (agroforestry, deep rooting crops, organic farming, integrated crop-livestock production, farm scale biogas production) in intensive agricultural systems might help to enhance agroecosystem resilience to environmental stress, to improve sustainability of food production systems and to preserve soils from degradation.

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The i-SoMPE project

Innovative SMPs will be at the core of the project. Some innovative soil management and farming practices can address major EJP SOIL targets “good agricultural soil management for: climate change mitigation and adaptation, sustainable production, ecosystem services and less soil degradation”. Many European farmers are open to introduce technological innovations and sustainable management practices to make their farms more climate-smart and sustainable, but need guidelines on effective pathways to do so. Moreover, innovative technical solutions (e.g. precision farming) are often not affordable for the farmers and other barriers can also occur (e.g. no market for innovative agricultural products, climatic constraints or socio-cultural lock-ins).

The i-SoMPE project was carried out between January 2021 and May 2022.

Outputs

Our project produced an inventory of innovative and well-known SMPs for climate-smart and sustainable soil management. Furthermore we produced an interactive tool and maps that allow the investigation of the SMPs potentials.

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Coordination

  • Dr Ir Frédéric Vanwindekens, Dr Ir Bruno Huyghebaert (Belgium, Wallonia - CRA-W - Centre wallon de recherches agronomiques)
  • Dr. Claudia Di Bene, Dr. Pasquale Nino (Italia - CREA - Council for Agricultural Research and Economics)
  • Olivier Heller, Dr. Peter Weisskopf (Switzerland - AGS - Agroscope)

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Partners

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Further information

blog
https://isompe.gitlab.io/blog/
email
f.vanwindekens@cra.wallonie.be
social networks
@EJPSOIL

i-Sompe is part of EJP SOIL

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EJP SOIL is a European Joint Programme Cofund on Agricultural Soil Management contributing to key societal challenges including climate change, water and future food security.

The objectives are to develop knowledge, tools and an integrated research community to foster climate-smart sustainable agricultural soil management that:

  • Allows sustainable food production
  • Sustains soil biodiversity
  • Sustains soil functions that preserves ecosystem services

More information on the EJP SOIL web site : https://ejpsoil.eu/

Grant information

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Soil management practices

Current adoption of soil management practices

Current adoption of innovative soil management practices

Welcome & User guide

Exploring the inventory of innovative soil management practices through this web app

This web application is designed for giving an easy way for exploring the inventory of innovative soil management practices to actors of farming systems, researchers, advisers, farmers, … This inventory is the main output of the i-SoMPE project.

This inventory is a unified list of soil management practices collected during the i-SoMPE project. The initial list of practices has been curated while preparing scientific communications of the project. The paper is under review : "Towards enhanced adoption of soil management practices by overcoming socio-technical and bio-physical constraints" (EJSS-505-23) to the European Journal of Soil Science.

  • General presentation : main contents of the inventory, description of the benefits and applicability of the practice.
  • Maps : static or dynamic, showing the current diffusion of the selected practice in the different countries and environmental zones of Europe (!! only available for the practices from the part A of the inventory)
  • Data (maps) : a dynamic table for exploring the adoption rate data (!! only available for the practices from the part A of the inventory)

Summary of the approach for collecting the data

The main goal of i-SoMPE project was to present and describe innovative soil management practices (SMPs) across Europe. Further, it assessed their ability to address the soil challenges that were identified in the EJP SOIL programme as:

  • Maintain/increase SOC
  • Avoiding N2O, CH4 emissions from soils
  • Avoid acidification
  • Avoid soil erosion
  • Avoid soil sealing
  • Avoid salinisation
  • Avoid contamination
  • Optimal soil structure
  • Enhance soil biodiversity
  • Enhance soil nutrient retention/use efficiency
  • Enhance water storage capacity

For completing this task, the i-SoMPE project rely on data collection by 25 partners in 24 countries across Europe (see tab "More info").

Aim

The first survey was split in three parts: two centred on pre-identified SMPs and the third one on innovations, experiences and more specific applications.

The aims of this survey were:

  • Assessing the diffusion of pre-identified SMPs across Europe (Part 1)
  • Characterising SMPs to assess their potential diffusion in Europe (Part 2 and 3)

Inventory A - Soil management practices

The two firsts parts of the first survey aimed to have a better understanding of the actual and potential diffusion of a pre-identified list of SMP.

  • Preliminary inventory

    A preliminary list of well-documented Soil Management Practices (SMPs) was set up by reviewing published articles and reports from specific European Research projects, also including deliverables from the EJP SOIL programme. A preliminary check of the type and characteristics of each of SMPs was done in order to avoid to repeat twice the same practice in the inventory list of SMPs. After completing the preliminary check, a total of 58 SMPs were selected and briefly described. According to the EJP SOIL classification, they were grouped in 7 land management categories 1 as follows:

    • agricultural systems,
    • buffer strips and small landscape elements,
    • crop protection,
    • crops and crop rotations,
    • organic matter and nutrient management,
    • tillage and traffic,
    • water management
  • Current diffusion of soil management practices countries and environmental zones of Europe

    The first part was centred on the current diffusion of all the 58 well-documented SMPs in the different countries and environmental zones of Europe.

  • Characterisation and potential diffusion of the pre-identified soil management practices in Europe

    The 58 pre-identified SMPs have been characterised in a second time within this part of the first survey. The aim was to assess their potential diffusion in Europe and their ability to address current soil challenges.

Inventroy B - Innovations, Experiences and specific applications

The third part of the survey focused on the innovations, experiences and specific applications. In this group of SMP, we expect no widely used practices or practices that are in the list of the 58 pre-defined SMPs. We asked partners to focus on experiences having an impact on soil (quality, health …) or linked to the main soil challenges highlighted in the whole EJP SOIL project. It could be a cutting-edge technologies/practices, with some promising effects, but only applied by a small number of farmers or in experimental plots (private, research centres, universities, …). An innovative practice can be linked to a well-documented alternative practices but had to show sufficient technical modifications / innovation to justify its presence as such in the inventory.

Data availability, and other tools and outputs for exploring the inventory

The content of the inventory is stored in a data base. In this section will be presented the various ways developed for exploring this data base and the inventory.

Data base, raw data, open data

The EJP SOIL project promotes the production and the diffusion of open data in science. Following this line of action, i-SoMPE produced open data. The data base with the raw data is publicly available on the shared space of the i-SoMPE community on Zenodo: