PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Farms make up nearly 40% of Europe's landscape, meaning that the sustainable use of agricultural land is critical to climate change adaptation efforts. More frequent droughts, heavy rainfall and heatwaves affect soil fertility, water availability, biodiversity conservation and pest outbreaks. Such factors have a direct impact on farm productivity and ecosystem health. The adaptive capacity of European agricultural landscapes has been weakened by the loss of spatial heterogeneity.
In Czechia, the landscape has been transformed into large homogeneous fields that are highly vulnerable to climate change. The development of agronomic and technological practices since the 1950s and collectivisation in the communist era were key driving forces for the creation of large farms and land consolidation. Accession to the European Union (EU) and the implementation of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) did not alter this trend. The average size of a Czech farm is 133 hectares (ha), which is the largest in the EU, and the country has the fourth highest average arable monoculture area in the EU.
Landscape features such as trees, green belt, fallow fields, field margins, agroforestry systems and small wetlands are a key component of agricultural landscapes and building their resilience to climate change is of pivotal importance. These features increase landscape heterogeneity, slow water runoff, reduce wind speeds, retain soil moisture and provide habitat connectivity. Based on the latest data from the European Commission (EC) in 2022, just 4.67% of agricultural land is covered with landscape features in Czechia, which is below the EU average of 5.64%. Several EU and national policies aim to substantially increase the share of agri-environmental characteristics in agricultural land, e.g. the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 which sets out to achieve a 10% share of high-diversity landscapes on agricultural land. However, practical barriers and an unfavourable economic environment persist. As a result, farms resist public policy pressures and adopt measures that allow them to formally circumvent regulatory requirements such as growing intercrops or nitrogen-fixing crops. As a result, the very low percentage of agri-structural elements in the landscape persist.
OBJECTIVES
The project aims to contribute to the adaptation of agricultural landscapes to climate change by helping to overcome barriers, introducing landscape features on farmland and by developing solutions tailored to the needs of individual farms.
Specific objectives are to:
- identify and describe the barriers that prevent the widespread introduction of agri-structural elements on agricultural land in Czech conditions;
- propose designs for agri-structural elements that effectively contribute to climate change adaptation and can be tailored to the needs of farms;
- examine the practicalities of the proposed agri-structural elements in the operation, economics and preferences of several pilot farms, and modify the designs according to the results;
- provide and disseminate practical tools to enable the implementation of the proposed agri-structural elements in the routine practices of farms;
- design and distribute practical mechanisms to enable public administrations to tailor interventions supporting the introduction of agri-structural elements to meet the needs of farms;
- provide and disseminate practical tools to enable companies that are partners of agricultural enterprises – the food industry, food retailers, the financial sector – to include effective support for agri-structural elements in agriculture in their corporate sustainability programmes;
- deliver methods to replicate the project results in EU countries with similar agricultural sector structures.
RESULTS
Based on both analytical work and practical validation on pilot farms, a range of climate adaptation measures will be proposed, tailored to the needs and preferences of farms. The following indicators reflect the anticipated results of the project:
- 10 000 farmers receive information on practical solutions for agri-structural elements;
- 8 farmers' organisations introduced to practical solutions for agri-structural elements tailored to farm needs
- 20-50 designs for agri-structural elements;
- 10 pilot farms equipped with landscape adaptation plans to reduce risks associated with climate change impacts;
- 5 pilot farms with implemented agri-structural plans to restore the necessary habitats to support biodiversity and connectivity of the farm area, which reduce the vulnerability of the territory to the effects of climate change;
- 10 pilot farms with economic analysis of costs and benefits of proposed interventions of agri-structural elements;
- 50 accredited agricultural advisors familiar with the methodology of agri-structural elements;
- 20 landscape planners familiar with the methodology of creating agri-structural elements;
- 50 members of relevant companies across the national value chain (food industry, food retail and financial sector) supporting adaptive agri-structural elements on agricultural land and landscape adaptation;
- the methodology for the implementation of agri-structural elements transferred to the conditions of other Central and Eastern European countries (Slovakia and Hungary).