Kick-off for EU project SHOWCASE: Promoting biodiversity as an integral part of agricultural practice

Together with 20 project partners from 15 countries, the Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) is researching which incentives are decisive for farms to integrate biodiversity-promoting agricultural practices into their everyday operations. The research project also aims to clarify which agro-ecological and socio-economic effects can be achieved with the help of these incentive instruments and how effective communication can be established between actors from science and agriculture. The project of the EU funding program Horizon 2020 started on 1st November, 2020 and has a duration of five years.

The project "SHOWCASING synergies between agriculture, biodiversity and Ecosystem services to help farmers capitalising on native biodiversity" investigates which key aspects of biodiversity appeal most to farmers and encourage appropriate farm management. The efficiency and effectiveness of various economic and social incentive models are being tested in study areas in Estonia, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden and Hungary. These models, among others, include outcome-based incentives, citizen participation to capture biodiversity, or biodiversity-enhancing business models. Here, not only impacts on the farm level but also on the landscape level will be investigated.

In cooperation with farmers, the working group DESCO at ZALF is focusing its research on farmers' awareness of biodiversity and the related motives for implementing biodiversity management measures. In a survey, the project team will determine which incentive instruments for actively supporting biodiversity are accepted by farms and what preferences the farms have for the design of these instruments. The results will then be used to develop and establish a narrative that will help communicate the benefits of biodiversity enhancing measures to agriculture, policy makers and society. SHOWCASE is coordinated by Wageningen University (David Kleijn). ZALF is involved in the project by the DESCO WG of Program Area 3 "Agricultural Landscape Systems" with Kati Häfner, Fabian Klebl and Annette Piorr.

Project partners:

Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (Germany)
Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (Spain)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (France)
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) (Italy)
De Vlinderstichting (Netherlands)
Eesti Maaülikool (Estonia)
Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER) (Switzerland)
Ökológiai Kutatóközpont (Hungary)
Pensoft Publishers (Bulgaria)
Peterson Projects BV (Netherlands)
Scienseed SL (Spain)
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) (Sweden)
The National Farmers' Union (NFU) (United Kingdom)
The University of Reading (United Kingdom)
Universidade de Évora (Portugal)
Università di Bologna (Italy)
University of Bern (Switzerland)
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) (Austria)
Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai (UBB) (Rumania)
Wageningen University (Netherlands) (Coordination)
WWF European Policy Office (WWF EPO) (Belgium)

Funding:

This project is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 862480 for about 8 million euros.