A Horizon 2020-funded project, DiverIMPACTS will be taking a three-stage approach. First, it will evaluate the performance of crop diversification through rotation, intercropping and multiple cropping. Second, it will provide actors in rural areas with the key enablers and innovations that remove existing barriers and ensure the actual uptake of the benefits of crop diversification at the farm, value chain and territorial scales. Finally, it will make recommendations to policy makers to facilitate the coordination of all relevant actors within the value chain.

The project will be building on existing experiences of crop diversification by networking and expanding 10 existing field experiments to quantify the impacts of crop diversification and by supporting 25 multi-actor case studies in their dynamic transition.

DiverIMPACTS will be offering a range of technical and organisational innovations to various stakeholders, ranging from farmers through to consumers, to remove blocks to diversification as well as strategies and recommendations to sustain crop diversification.

Through its multi-actor approach, DiverIMPACTS will accompany and support innovation groups in their dynamic processes to develop sustainable value chain systems characterised by a high level of crop diversification and new market products.

The consortium involves pioneers in crop diversification and has considerable experience in both the design and multi-criteria assessment of innovative systems and the analysis of barriers that may lock-in the transition towards sustainable diversified systems that can contribute to Horizon 2020’s rural renaissance objectives.