New deliverable available: D1.1. Review of the definition of the existing ecological approaches

A new LIFT project’s deliverable in the form of a public report is available for download: D1.1 Review of the definition of the existing ecological approaches .

The report has been prepared by the partners from: JRC (Italy), SRUC (United Kingdom), UNIBO (Italy), UBO (Germany), INRA (France).

The report presents the first steps to the definition of a framework that identifies main farming systems and the degree to which each of them adopts ecological practices. This early phase of the typology work aims at providing a consolidated framework composed of farming systems and farming practices, and a first screening of which practice is associated with which system.

A literature review was conducted to identify existing categorisations of farm types based on the degree of uptake of ecological approaches and practices. The review involved a detailed search of three databases: Web of Science – WoS Core Collections; Scopus; CAB Direct.

Results of this review lead to the identification of the following farming systems, characterised by a decreasing rate of adoption of ecological practices: agroecological, organic and biodynamic, integrated, low-input, conservation, conventional.

Based on the literature and expert judgement a framework to cluster farming practices, and provide a first attempt to link farming systems with farming practices is proposed.

Next steps consist in attaching data and thresholds to the farming practices, to feed the analysis and the modelling processes to characterise individual farms with reference to their uptake of ecological practices.