Farmers in Europe are set to receive open innovation help for implementing climate-smart agriculture policies and practices.
This week saw the launch of Agrisource, Europe’s first open innovation platform for climate-smart agriculture (CSA).
CSA is a set of agricultural practices that sustainably increase productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The approach is needed because the world’s population is growing which is driving up the demand for food. Yet production struggles to keep up as natural resources such as soils and water are stretched too thinly. CSA helps to guide actions to change agricultural systems to ensure food security in the face of the deleterious effects of a changing climate (read more about CSA here, on the World Bank’s website).
Powerful Open Innovation Support
Agrisource will bring together farmers, research institutions, cooperatives, policy-makers, NGOs, businesses and other partners in a virtual environment to debate and discuss solutions and methods and to act as a catalyst for novel CSA technologies and approaches.
The intention is for the open innovation platform to become a key resource for those seeking information or who want to innovate with CSA methods. It also maps inter-related research and innovation programs and provides expertise on tap.
“Agrisource is a new capacity-building tool at the crossroads of knowledge and networks in CSA,” said Agrisource’s lead developer Marc Nougier of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research.
“It offers a new, systemic approach to climate change, combining a powerful search engine with community-created content, to drive innovation, communication, partnerships and knowledge-sharing.”