Farm Level

(#WP8)

The farming practices in production and harvesting of our chosen underutilised crops (e.g., tomatoes, legumes, cereals) in each pilot site will be documented and analysed with regard to the needed resources and obtained outcomes based on the information from WP7.

Existing farm records will be used to describe the entire production process for each underutilized crop at farm level. Particular emphasis will be given to all aspects of agro biodiversity to enable the assessment of biodiversity incorporation at farm level through relevant factors (e.g., crop variety, crop rotation, field size, type of agricultural inputs). The criteria catalogue of the Swiss Credit Point System for managing biodiversity at farm level will serve as a template (Birrer et al. 2014) and will be adapted for the use in this project.This information will be used for the identification of normative scenarios and the key performance indicators (KPIs) that should be optimized for better farming practices which are able to incorporate diversity of crops.

This analysis will also help to better understand at which point the decision to introduce more crops into production is made and the specific factors upon which this decision is based.

Consequently, at the farm level, the medium and long-term competitiveness will be improved mainly through the reintroduction of underutilized diverse crops which provide opportunities to diversify farm activities and income.