ClieNFarms

In support of the Green Deal for Europe, the project aims to innovate and engage stakeholders in the agricultural world to support the transition of agriculture and strengthen efforts to mitigate climate change. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2050 and increase carbon sequestration in agricultural soils, a strong systemic approach is needed. The challenge is to develop, co-design and scale up systemic and locally relevant solutions to promote climate-neutral and resilient European agriculture.

The project is coordinated by INRAE and brings together 33 partners, including Acta (representing Terres Inovia, Institut de l'élevage and Arvalis) and private companies (Nestlé, Danone and EDF).

ClieNFarms is a European project that aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the agricultural sector, starting from the farm scale and crossing it with the sector and territory scales. The aim is to achieve a GHG reduction of at least 50% by 2050, so that the agricultural sector can contribute to achieving carbon neutrality in the region (i.e., not emitting more emissions into the air than can be offset by sequestration via forests, agricultural soils or other means).

The project supports farmers in their efforts to reduce emissions and store more carbon in the soil to offset residual emissions as far as possible.

• Setting up stakeholder dynamics in territorial case studies

Innovative systemic solutions for climate change mitigation are tested in some twenty territorial case studies across Europe (including 5 in France, with 2 in field crop systems), and assessed using modeling approaches and multi-criteria evaluations.

These territorial case studies (christened I3S for "innovative systemic solution space") will cover the diversity of production systems (crops, livestock, dairy products, special crops, etc.) and geographical situations (from East to West and North to South Europe, as well as New Zealand).

Each territorial case is then organized around a demonstration farm for more precise measurements, around 10 pilot farms to implement mitigation levers in agricultural situations, and around 100 neighboring farms to raise awareness through information dissemination actions (visits, surveys, documents).

On this basis, a "creative arena" of the territorial case aims to bring together other players in the area's sector in order to accelerate and facilitate farmers' efforts.

• Exchanging knowledge and references on mitigation levers and support tools
  
• Avenues for scaling up mitigation efforts, for massification on a territorial or sectoral scale, or for facilitating carbon markets.
  
• Messages to, and exchanges with, other R&D groups or national or European policy bodies on the subject of mitigation.