Marginal lands for growing industrial crops: turning a burden into an opportunity
Industrial Crops can provide valuable resources for high added value products and bioenergy. MAGIC aims to promote the sustainable development of resource-efficient and economically profitable industrial crops grown on marginal lands. To achieve that an up-to-date database of existing resource-efficient industrial crops will be developed with information on their agronomic characteristics, input requirements, yield performance and quality traits for end-use applications (WP1). A Decision Support System (DSS) will be developed and validated with the active involvement of farmers and end users. In parallel, current and future marginal lands in Europe facing natural constraints will be mapped, characterised and analysed to provide a spatially explicit classification that will serve as a basis for developing sustainable best-practice options for industrial crops (WP2). The most promising crop species will be identified taking advantage of the profound experience of the consortium and in a multi-actor approach with stakeholders. Further investigation actions include the creation of new breeding tools and strategies towards better crop varieties (WP3), the identification and optimization of appropriate agronomic practices with limited input requirements (WP4) and the development of suitable harvesting strategies and logistics to optimise the biomass supply-chains (WP5). The impact of MAGIC will be maximized by integrating sustainability aspects (covering environment, society and economy) of the value chains (WP6). Success stories of industrial crops in EU regions will be analysed addressing technical, environmental, economic and social issues to produce policy recommendations and best-practice guidelines for their promotion at local/regional level (WP7). The project results, database, maps and the DSS tool will be used as dissemination tools to increase farmers’ awareness and establish strong links with EIP AGRI (WP8).