#soil4nature

Soils of the Pannonian region have been used for farming for a long time and agriculture plays a key role in this region. However, such intensive farming activities combined with changes in climate patterns have substantial negative effects on their functionality. Once degraded soils cannot resist the impacts of climate change and this can lead to loss of soil and ecosystem funcions. Despite continuous research and development in agriculture, results and technologies related to best practices for soils and farm management are still unclear to farmers and agriculture practitioners. The main objective of this project is to co-create suitable agriculture practices, to assist regenerative agriculture, for local soils and environment conservation while improving the productivity and health of soils in the Pannonian region. Specifically, this project will collect, test and disseminate different agriculture techniques to improve soil and ecological functions of the agricultural land in the study region. To achieve this, we will focus on best soil management practices that aim to improve soil health through soil structure, soil organic carbon, and biodiversity while maintaining crop yield using the “Bottom-Up” (Farmer-Researcher) approach. Currently, initiatives focus on a top-bottom approach where technologies, solutions, and hypotheses are first tested among researchers, and involve farmers in the final stage. Consequently, they fail to meet the needs of the end-users (farmers and other agriculture practitioners). The proposed project (Soil4Nature), aims to address these interrelated issues.

Soil4Nature will collect, combine, harmonize, analyze, and integrate the results and data product developed through real conditions experiments. Furthermore, the Soil4nature project will bring together farmers, agriculture technologies, and social-economic research centers from Hungary and Slovakia to work on sustainable soil and farm management to disseminate and share knowledge across the two countries. In the final stage, Soil4Nature will develop and implement methodologies for upscaling and communicating the project results to ensure a successful dissemination phase. The resulting data will be merged into a single digital farm (in the format of an interactive dashboard) to develop a data-based visualization. The project results will be communicated in a visual and easy-to-understand data communication approach designed for non-technical users.