BEATLES Project Sheds Light on Climate Smart Agriculture

May 13, 2024 | Innovation

The first webinar for the BEATLES EU project recently took place and CAP Network Ireland were delighted to attend to hear more about the project’s research and successes. The BEATLES project aspires to identify the individual, systemic and policy barriers and levers that influence behavioural change in entire food systems.

BEATLES also aims to develop transformation pathways of change to accelerate the systemic and systematic transition to climate-smart agriculture and smart farming technologies. The project is fully aligned with the ambitions of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies, and the new CAP at regional and EU levels.

During the webinar, members of the project’s case studies presented on their work and findings in relation to behavioural change. Case studies gave a vital insight into the research in action and there were presentations from the 5 pilot studies conducted in different EU countries. These were:

  • Lithuania – Wheat
  • Germany – Organic Dairy
  • Spain – Apples
  • Denmark – Pig Sector
  • Netherland – Onions and Potatoes

According to the BEATLES project, the selected pilots are “the major production systems in the EU and correspond to the majority of EU agricultural exports and account for 45% of agricultural land. The essence of this selection of the use case pilots is to account for the diversity of contexts, conditions, farming systems, farm typologies and climate-smart agricultural approaches across the EU in order to derive meaningful systemic insights about the validity of behavioural insights across countries and contexts.”

There was also an interactive workshop, where attendees could highlight what they perceived as the key challenges and opportunities for the transformation of the food system. To learn more about the project, visit the BEATLES website. The project has also produced a number of academic journals and articles for further research about climate smart agriculture.

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