Quoting from EU in its Horizon Europe Research programme[1]:

Agroecology [2] is a holistic approach that relies on and maximizes the use of ecological processes to support agricultural production. By working more with nature and ecosystem services, agroecology has the potential to increase the circularity, diversification and autonomy of farms, and drive a full transformation of farming systems and agricultural value chains, from input substitution and beyond. Agroecological farming systems therefore have great potential to enhance the sustainability performance of agriculture and agricultural value chains contribute to the objectives of the EU Farm to Fork Strategy.. Research & Innovation (R&I) will speed up the transition to sustainable and competitive agriculture by unlocking the potential of agroecology, including enhancing organic farming in the agroecological transitions, increasing EU-grown plant proteins and advancing digital and data technologies as enablers.

But how to move forward ? the webinar will present few success stories where farmers have already their hands in the sustainable future.

[1] Horizon europe call
[2] http://www.fao.org/3/i9037en/i9037en.pdf

Vincent  Levavasseur  has worked as market gardener for 5 years in his own farm. Develop the first vegetable farm installation without till and chemistry. Contribute on farmer based movement like Maraichage Sol Vivant, La Vache heureuse, Pour une agriculture du vivant. He is leading many current projects to develop agroecology like massive open online courses on living soils, knowledge management in agroecology, quality measurement of soil and food.

Alain Peeters is an agronomist and agroecologist with 40 years of experience in agricultural and environmental research as well as environmental protection and management. He was professor for agronomy for 20 years, a pioneer of organic farming in Belgium and Europe, author of several renowned publications and one of the founders of Agroecology Europe and now its Secretary General. He is currently developing agroecological systems in commercial farms in order to develop the systems and demonstrate their potential.

Olivier Husson. Engineer in agronomy (ENSA Montpellier, FR) and Doctor in Agronomy (Wageningen University, NL), Olivier Husson works at CIRAD (Centre for International Cooperation in Agronomic Research for Development), in the AIDA Research Unit (Agroecology and Sustainable Intensification of Annual crops). For 30 years, he has been working on co-designing with farmers Conservation Agriculture systems based on Direct Seeding on permanent soil cover in tropical areas (West Africa, Viet Nam, Madagascar), alternating fundamental research, applied research, training and extension works. Since 2010, he has been developing an approach to soil and plant health based on fundamental biological processes, regulated by pH, Eh (redox potential) and EC (electrical conductivity), developing measurement methods to use these indicators as management tools for agroecological crop protection.

Franck Le Gall, PhD Eng. in Physics and Telecommunications, is CEO at Easy Global Market, an innovative SME focused on integration and validation of emerging technologies. He is driving company development of advanced testing technologies as well as integration of IoT and data platforms. He involves himself in standardisation area including oneM2M and ETSI ISG CIM. Previously, he has participated in large R&D projects within the big industry (Orange, Alcatel, Thomson) and spent 9 years as Director within an innovation management company. He directed more than 10 large scale projects and studies related to the evaluation and monitoring of innovation and technical programs as well as research projects. He is now participating in several EU research projects in domains such as  water management, cities, aquaculture and agriculture providing technical knowledge on the whole sensors to applications data chain. He has authored many scientific papers as well as patents.

Grzegorz Siebielec is a head of Soil Science Erosion and Land Protection Dept. He received a Ph.D. in agronomy in 2001. His main research interests are soil protection and remediation, land use change, soil quality, soil sealing, waste management. He participated in 12 international projects, including 5FP (PROLAND), 6FP (SENSOR, LUMOCAP), 7FP (GREENLAND, CATCH-C, CANTOGETGHER, RECARE) and H2020 (NUTRIMAN, EJP Soil), and coordinated work packages in two of them (7FP CANTOGETHER and URBAN-SMS executed under Central Europe Programme). Coordinated national monitoring of soil quality for Ministry of Environment. Currently, he is a national representative for soil issues in EIONET, Common Forum on Contaminated Lands and Global Soil Partnership. Has led the IUNG team in the services provided to EU-JRC (Provision of thematic studies in the field of Agri-Environment) and DG-ENV (Providing support in relation to the implementation of the EU Soil Thematic Strategy). He has published more than 200 contributions to scientific journals, chapters and conference proceedings. H-index 16 (Scopus), Author of 43 IF papers.

Vasileios Gkisakis :Agronomist (MSc, PhD), specialized in Mediterranean crops, Agroecology and Sustainable food systems. Affiliate researcher and lecturer in the Hellenic Mediterranean University (Greece), as well as visiting professor in CIHEAM-MAICh, University of Life Sciences (Poland), Agricultural University of Plovdiv (Bulgaria) and University of Vic (Spain). Collaborating with several research groups across Europe on organic farming / agroecology, olive production, biodiversity management in several research & development projects. Also, Board member of the European Association for Agroecology (Agroecology Europe) and moderator of the Agroecological Network of Greece (Agroecology Greece).

Marcos Lana is an agronomist focused on the use of crop models to assess the impact of climate change and agronomic management on crop performance, so as to propose suitable adaptation strategies concerning crop production and other ecosystem services. He is involved in the development and adoption of agroecology as a tool to support sustainable farming systems. Currently he is active in different regions of Europe, Africa and Latin America. At the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences he teach topics related to cropping systems, having also lectures at the Humboldt Universität–Berlin.  In both Universities he advises and co-advises students at different levels.

Philippe Cousin, after successful involvement in +40 EU R&D projects leading to the set-up of a very large network of worldwide contacts and partnerships, he is today capitalizing his large experience gained in R&D projects for developing a vision to support Sustainable Development Goals and EU Green Deal in particular in using miniaturized spectrometry combined with AI. His objectives is to bring and improve low cost scanners for a broad range of use. In May 2020 he created a spin-off Senseen to implement his vision. Authors of +50 scientific papers, he has 38 years of rich and diverse professional experience in ICT including many years in R&D, at top management level of private companies and few years with a broad insight into Information Communication Technology (ICT) at the European policy-making level (e.g. European Commission, EOTC).

Les 24 et 25  janvier prochain auront lieu les 6èmes Rencontres nationales du réseau Maraichage Sol Vivant à SupAgro Montpellier. L’occasion pour les membres du réseau et l’ensemble des personnes intéressées de venir échanger lors de ces 2 jours avec : Conférences, ateliers et visites de ferme.