RESCHEDULE - RESilient to Climate CHange Extremes MeDiterranean AgricUltural Systems: LEveraging the Power of Soil Health and Associated Microbiota

In the Mediterranean decisions on farming systems management are taken mainly empirically based on farmers’ experience. However, shifts in climate (accelerated warming, changes in precipitation patterns) challenge the effectiveness of traditional agronomical practices to maintain the long term economic viability of smallholder farms and underline the need for improving our knowledge on farming systems management to allow the development of transition pathways toward more resilient and sustainable systems to climate change. The principal hypothesis of RESCHEDULE is that improvements in the resilience of small family farms in the Mediterranean Region at scales able to cause impact require the adoption of integrated and easily adaptable approaches that are scientifically-informed and consider all the aspects of conferring resilience (technical, social, economic, institutional) to farming systems. To this direction, RESCHEDULE employs a bottom-up multi-actor approach to stimulate a strong interaction between researchers and key actors (policy makers, farmers, private sector) of the agricultural sector from the proposal onset to identify compatible solutions for the adaptation of smallholder farms (defined after Davidova et al.30 ( <5 ha)), the dominant form of farming systems in the Mediterranean, to climate change and climate extremes. These solutions target mainly the soil health restoration (no tillage, intercropping, soil microbiota) will be evaluated in an pedo-climatic gradient (GR, IT, TUN; Table 1.4) to design appropriate transition pathways of resilient and sustainable smallholder farms (GR, IT, TUN). To further advance our insights on climate change effects on soil health restoration potential, corresponding treatments are planned at the Global Change Experimental Facility in Germany.

The RESCHEDULE project foccusses on strategies that improve soil health, the main pilar of agricultural production adopting a bottom-up approach. Most specifically the main intevrntions of RESCHEDULE include: i) Intercropping of olive orchards with local legume variaties ii) Biochar application iii) Rotation of cereals and legumes iv) AM fungal inoculation v) Use of biofertlizers and rotation of B. napus and M. sativa vi) Crop rotation under current and future climate vii) Soil microbiota engineering viii) Soil modelling at timescales relevant to farm management ix) Socio-economic analysis