About the conference

Crop diversification can help to support agroecological transitions towards sustainable agri-food systems, mitigate climate change and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Indeed, research has shown that, on average, crop diversification significantly enhances crop yields, biodiversity, and several ecosystem services including water quality, pest and disease control and soil quality, compared to low diversity rotations. Regardless of the context, a combination of several diversification practices outperforms any individual diversification strategy.

However, the benefits of crop diversification are sometimes coupled with less desirable im-pacts (trade-offs). For example, the introduction of cover crops in hillside areas may prevent soil erosion but this may require using chemical destruction (pesticides) or mechanical destruction (soil tillage), which may increase global pesticide use or greenhouse gas emissions respectively. Because such trade-offs are highly context specific, it is necessary to continuously adapt strategies, crops and crop management practices to local soil, climate and socio-economic contexts in order to fully benefit from crop diversification. There are also several barriers to crop diversification which need to be overcome. For example, uncertainties, risks and variability of processing new crops/products hinder willingness to invest in new value chains. Collaboration among actors involved in agri-food systems and their empowerment to innovate, learn and adapt are key factors to scale out crop diversification.

In this context, the DiverIMPACTS final conference aimed to:

1. highlight how cropping system diversification can be a key lever to support agro-ecological transition, and
2. explore ways to achieve diversified agri-food systems for improved productivity, delivery of ecosystem services, resource-efficient and sustainable value chains as well as more integrated sociotechnical systems facilitating co-innovation across research and development, education, advisory, business and policy sectors.

In particular, the conference:

• examined practical systemic transitions towards more agroecological agri-food systems together with the trade-off they have to deal with.
• presented and debated:
  • how to overcome barriers to crop diversification;
  • how CAP measures could help foster diversified systems;
  • recommendations for training and advisory services as well as for formal education;
  • how to promote crop diversification all along the value chain;
  • how to produce actionable knowledge for crop diversification.
• explore how to build on the DiverIMPACTS project legacy to go one step further in the agro-ecological transition of agri-food systems.

The conference engaged invited policy makers, institution and value chain representatives to generate multi-stakeholder perspectives and ideas. It drew heavily on DiverIMPACTS outputs and highlighted the benefits of the participatory dynamic implemented throughout the project, in close interaction with 25 multi-actors case studies. The conference also mobilised feedback from parallel regional conferences and the collective intelligence of conference participants.

The conference provided a unique opportunity for scientists, practitioners, policy makers and other actors along the supply chain to pave the way to reach European Green Deal targets defined in the Farm-to-Fork strategy.