European Academies Science Advisory Council - Regenerative agriculture in Europe

This report takes as a first point of departure the goals and commitments made in the recent European Commission’s Green Deal, and specifically the Biodiversity and Farm to Fork Strategies, for dealing with both climate change and biodiversity loss while at the same time securing production of an adequate supply of nutritious food. Following this a critical analysis of the recent and promising, but from a scientific point of view largely untested, the concept of regenerative agriculture was given.

The report then gives a global background to understanding the food system in chapter 2, including an overview of shifting global production and trade. In chapter 3, the report analyses the climate and biodiversity challenges facing agriculture in Europe. However, the main messages from this report are based on the analyses in chapter 4, with an extensive literature review based on existing meta-analyse and systematic reviews on farming practices intended to increase carbon capture and storage and enhance biodiversity and where data were available, also analysed impact on food production. The report specifically analyses the potential synergies and trade-offs that may occur at different scales from plot- and farm- to landscape scale. In the analyses, we also paid specific attention to the role and untapped potential of various restoration interventions in the agricultural landscape for increasing carbon storage and enhancing biodiversity

The report ends by highlighting evidence-based recommendations for policy. As a final point, this report focuses on ecological sustainability, ecological resilience, and restoration of natural resources and ecosystems in agricultural landscapes in the EU, with a particular focus on biodiversity, carbon capture and storage, and food production.