Overview

Agricultural production is a major driver of regional and global environmental deterioration, while at the climate change jeopardizes agricultural systems. Integrating knowledge on environmental impacts of agriculture on nutrient cycles and its importance as sink and source for greenhouse gases is a prerequisite to support the required transformational change of the agricultural sector as well as to ensure its environmental sustainability. Moreover, while reducing the environmental impacts also strategies for adapting agricultural systems to climate change need to be identified in order to secure food security and farmers livelihoods. These matters need to be addressed urgently. It is the vision of the Center for Landscape Research in Sustainable Agricultural Futures - Land-CRAFT to identify and quantify the multiple environmental as well as socio-economic benefits associated with the change of agricultural practices at farm and landscape scale and while reducing the climate impact of agriculture also to identify opportunities for adaptation. The vision of Land-CRAFT The green transition can only succeed if we better understand the processes that lead to GHG emissions and losses of nutrients to the environment and how landscape management may be adapted to mitigate the environmental footprint of agricultural production systems while increasing their resilience to climate change. Therefore, achieving the goals for the green transformation of agriculture requires detailed knowledge not only on the effectiveness of greenhouse gas mitigation measures, but as well a realistic assessment which options may be implemented at farm and landscape level. This requires a combination of basic and applied research and co-design of mitigation and adaptation measures.