Growing REsilience AgriculTure (GREAT LIFE)

Description:

The GREAT LIFE project aims to implement an innovative and integrated approach, from crops to market, in order to tackle the effects of climate change on agricultural activities in the Po Valley, as well as in Italy as a whole, thereby helping to sustain farmers’ income, reducing water consumption and producing quality foods for the final market. GREAT LIFE plans to raise awareness on the value of food for the protection of natural resources, the environment and health, with the aim of promoting awareness regarding the contribution that food choices can have on the environment, health and the economy. The project will tackle the whole value of food chain in order to stimulate supply and demand of resilient food. In this way, the project will contribute to reaching the targets set by the 2020 Climate & Energy Package, as well as support the more efficient use of natural resources. It is also therefore expected to contribute to the application of the Water Framework Directive and the European Soil Thematic Strategy (COM 2006), while being fully in line with the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy.

In the frame of GREAT LIFE project, one of the recently published studies analysed the phenology of proso millet, cultivated in two experimental sites in the Emilia-Romagna region (North of Italy), providing a detailed description of primary and secondary phenological stages, managed and encoded in the BBCH scale. The results may provide comprehensive indications for future agronomic surveys on the crop.

The GREAT LIFE project has produced guidelines for resilient crops cultivation to promote both the knowledge of millet and sorghum and good agricultural practices to cultivate these cereals defined as "resilient" because they are capable of developing with good yields in hot and arid areas. The choice to cultivate these resilient crops can be a good adaptation strategy to reduce the impact of climate change on agricultural activities in geographic areas subject to progressive drying of the climate. In these contexts, in fact, millet and sorghum guarantee considerable advantages from an agronomic point of view and can fully satisfy the needs of the farmer. The agricultural practices adopted and described in the guidelines are examples of the conservative agriculture model, that promotes the progressive reduction of tillage (minimum or no-tillage), the permanence of the vegetal cover of the soil (cover crop) and the crop rotations. The adoption of these practices contributes to increasing the resilience and adaptability of the agroecosystem to climate change.

Project information

Lead

Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Department of agricultural and food sciences (DISTAL)

Partners

Alce Nero S.p.a, Italy

Municipality of Cento, Italy

KILOWATT SOC. COOP., Italy

LIFE CYCLE ENGINEERING srl, Italy

Source of funding

LIFE17 CCA/IT/000067