Regenerative Agriculture in Europe: Accelerating the transition

Project phase 1: Identifying the Current State of Regenerative Agriculture in Europe

A clear overview of the current state of RegenAg in Europe is missing. This makes it harder for various agrifood actors, particularly farmers, to decide on the next steps in the transition towards a regenerative system. In the first phase of this project, the goal was to provide an overview of RegenAg in Europe for arable farming, including differences between countries and crops by focusing on major row crop growing areas. Furthermore, the project aimed at delivering initial insights into the hotspots where most changes are required. The results provided insight in the current gaps and future opportunities for next steps.

The overview report covers the following topics:

• Definition and concept of RegenAg
• An overview of the current knowledge base in Europe on RegenAg, focused on row crops, including differences in market and farmer circumstances
• A review of the current private sector and governmental programmes
• Discussing most common types of interventions and some of the key metrics to measure outcomes
• Delivering key insights and principles from the current knowledge base to apply new projects and scaling up initiatives
• Identifying opportunities, risks, gaps, and how to address these

Project phase 2: Regenerative agriculture in Europe: accelerating the transition

The second phase of this project is introduced to incorporate our learnings until now, on the one hand and to explore the feasibility of our ambitious objective on the other hand. The aim is to come to a detailed scope and set-up of the organisation, to optimise an approach to boost the transition of RegenAg towards sustainable agriculture.

Therefore, this second project phase includes the following activities:

1. Defining a target point, together with general RegenAg principles, for analysing the costs and benefits of RegenAg transitions in EU areas. We will look at which indicator(s) and at which indicator value(s) farmers could be positioned and distinguished as ‘RegenAg agricultural entrepreneurs’ creating positive impact.
2. Setting up a European network of demo farms, to enhance the adoption of Regen Ag practices, education and demonstration of RegenAg measures for farmers and advisors. In this project an approach, collaboration and structure for setting up a European network of demo farms to enhance the transition towards RegenAg, will be explored and organised.
3. Providing initial insights in drivers & barriers of RegenAg frontrunners, by selecting 28-30 frontrunners who seem to match the RegenAg requirements in four selected EU countries: France, Germany, Poland and Hungary. Based on in-depth interviews, we aim to understand their key drivers, barriers, and behaviouristic features, for shifting to RegenAg.
4. Set-up collaboration and a Plan of Action. We aim at establishing a core group of EU public/private organisations and local research/knowledge partners to join a future consortium to accelerate the transition of RegenAg. In this second project phase we will deliver a solid Plan of Action, including the examination of a static/dynamic cost-benefit analysis.