Tree establishment to restore degraded boreal post-mining lands is challenged by low soil productivity, a harsh microclimate, and potentially high contaminant levels. The use of mixed vegetation can facilitate the microclimate but increase competition for soil resources. A statistical accounting of plant–plant interactions and adaptation to multisp...
Intensified livestock production is considered as a promising pathway for smallholder farmers. Nevertheless, this pathway may entail prohibitive investment requirements of labour, capital or trade-offs at farm level that preclude sustainable intensification. We used fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to assess farmers' perceptions of changes in the farm...
Accumulating shocks and long-term stresses, such as trade conflicts, climate change and deteriorating public trust in agricultural practices have raised concerns about the resilience of Europe’s diverse farming systems. The SURE-Farm approach aims to systematically assess the resilience capacities of farming systems, i.e. regional constellations of...
Current agricultural systems in Europe are locked in to environmentally unsustainable practices due to a range of institutional, cultural, social and financial factors. These are compounded by environmental challenges. This chapter assesses three case studies in Europe and their respective stakeholder perspectives on challenges and potential soluti...
It is not known whether dietary guidelines proposing a limited intake of animal protein are compatible with the adoption of circular food systems. Using a resource-allocation model, we compared the effects of circularity on the supply of animal-source nutrients in Europe with the nutritional requirements of the EAT-Lancet reference diet. We found t...
This chapter aims to synthesize key findings from the SURE-Farm project. We first discuss possible amendments to the framework to assess the resilience of farming systems. We then review why many of Europe’s farming systems face a formidable and structural resilience crisis. While emphasizing the diversity of resilience capacities, challenges and n...
Due to collaborative stakeholder networks and innovations, the arable farming system in the Veenkoloniën (the Netherlands) has demonstrated remarkable resilience. Yet, a greater intensity or new types of challenges can undermine the system’s functioning in the future. We suggest various transformative strategies for maintaining specialisation in st...
This chapter assessed sustainability and resilience of eleven farming systems in their current situation, as well as in hypothetical future systems, using qualitative and quantitative methods. The assessment shows that current farming systems address sustainability dimensions in an unbalanced way and are characterized by poor resilience. Future res...
This chapter presents the multi-scale co-creation methodology used in SURE-Farm to involve stakeholders with the aim of assessing the resilience of European farming systems. This methodology resulted in a wide range of valuable insights and allowed to identify convergent and divergent stakeholders’ perceptions with possible policy implications.
Insight into the response of cereal yields to nitrogen fertilizer is fundamental to improving nutrient management and policies to sustain economic crop benefits and food sufficiency with minimum nitrogen pollution. Here we propose a new method to assess long-term (LT) regional sustainable nitrogen inputs. The core is a novel scaled response functio...
