Agriculture has a complex relationship with the environment because it is a major sector using natural resources. At European level, it plays an important role in land use and cover patterns, with grassland and cropland making together 39% of total land cover. The post-war agricultural revolution led to a significant intensification of European agriculture because of the advances in agronomy, genetics, and chemistry that favored the development of mechanization and the use external inputs the large-scale. The improvements of European agricultural sector were also favored by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), laid down in Article 39 of the Treaty of Rome (1957), that initially aimed “to increase agricultural productivity through the rational development of agriculture, towards the optimal utilization of the factors of production”. This intensification was accompanied by the progressive specialization of farms, with the adoption of cropping systems characterized by monoculture, or short-rotations, with genetically uniform improved varieties. Although the intensification of farming systems aimed at guaranteeing high productivity, some negative impacts were observed. Particularly, undesirable impacts on soil fertility and erosion, deterioration in water quality, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and rise in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions were detected, missing the goals of agro-environmental sustainability. Therefore, 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) In this context, the agricultural policy evolution promotes the adoption of low-input and innovative Soil management practice (SMP) in intensive agricultural systems, in order to enhance agroecosystem resilience to environmental stress, by improving sustainability of food production systems and preserving agricultural soils from degradation. 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 1.1). 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.In this context, the adoption of low-input and innovative SMP (e.g. reducing tillage intensity, organic and mixed fertilisation, crop residue management, and optimising 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. Many European farmers are willing to introduce technological innovations and SMPs to transform their farms in more climate-smart and sustainable systems. Neverthless, to provide this transition they need appropriate guidelines, reporting the 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 aims to document innovative SMPs across Europe. 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”. Three main activities have been done: 1. Inventory of soil management practices. Based on data collected by 25 partners in 24 countries across Europe, an inventory of 100 SMPs describing environmental limits in terms of farming systems, land use, site and soils but also evaluating their current application and their potential impacts and drafting their potential ability for tackling main soil challenges. The approach is detailed in chapter 3 and the inventory itself is shared in a printable version in appendix E, but other user friendly tools are also proposed (web application, reactive report, details can be found in section 3.4. 2. Framework to assess agro-environmental limits. Based on zonal statistics of environmental variable, a framework was developed for estimating whether a practice is applicable in a certain agroenvironmental zone and if so, how large the potential area of application is. Furthermore, the compiled data allows the calculation of SMP-specific variables that may limit the adoption of a practice. The methodological approach is presented in chapter 2 and was applied in three exemplary case studies in chapter 5. 3. Barriers and opportunities for adopting innovative soil management practices. Finally, qualitative approaches, including qualitative surveys and data analyses, were set up for assessing innovative soil management practices in terms of adoption by farmers, revealing main barriers and opportunities. This approach was applied to a main case study at European level, Conservation agriculture (chapter 4) and to 4 diversified cases studies (chapter 5). This documents is the final report of the i-SoMPE project. It presents the approaches used and the main results.The framework for assessing the agro-environmental constraints as well as for highlighting the barriers and opportunities, influencing the diffusion of innovations have been applied to a limited number of case studies. The main barriers and opportunities to increase the adoption level of the innovative SMPs in Europe are linked to farming systems Beside the classical printable version of the inventory (pdf), a web-browser version (in html) in the form of ‘gitbook’ is available and, last but not least, a user-friendly reactive web-based application in the form of a shiny app.
