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CARBON FARMING

project successfully kicked off

The marvellous city of Bled in Slovenia hosted the kick-off meeting of the CARBON FARMING project on 14 April 2023. Representatives of eleven consortium partners coming from nine countries have successfully launched this ambitious INTERREG CENTRAL EUROPE project that aims at bringing carbon farming on the fast-track to development, with a total funding of 1,8 million EUR from the European Regional Development Fund.

But what is carbon farming? Dr Antoaneta Kuhar, the project coordinator at the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia explains: “The idea behind carbon farming is quite simple: Remove excess carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil, where it will facilitate plant growth. In this way, carbon farming not only contributes to reducing GHG emissions, but it preserves and restores soil health through the increase of soil organic matter thus contributing to enhanced food production, resilience, security and biodiversity.”

Thus, it is no surprise that carbon farming is high on the international policy agenda, the Carbon Farming Initiative was officially presented by the European Commission at the end of 2021. However, the concept is very new, therefore techniques, business models and policies still need to be designed and tested. This is exactly where the current project will make an important contribution within the next three years.

The partners will elaborate and test six different carbon farming techniques and five business models in all participating countries and beyond, whereby the uptake and upscaling will be facilitated by the Guide for Carbon Farming Techniques, the Carbon Farming Business Model Procedures as well as by roadmaps for carbon-dioxide sequestration monitoring. The Central European Carbon Farming Cluster will accelerate the policy recognition, using the strategy and action plan also developed by the project. Capacity building measures like a 3-day winter school and transnational seminars complement the service portfolio of the project, ensuring a comprehensive impact in better understanding of carbon farming benefits by different stakeholders, wider acceptance of carbon farming practices and business models and newly developed monitoring models. The project will also prepare decision makers for the participatory dialogue between different stakeholder groups when deciding about supportive measures within Common Agricultural Policy 2023-2027.

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