R&D for a more sustainable agriculture in the Mediterranean basin

Climate change will reduce precipitation in the Mediterranean basin, and this will add new challenges to the already existing agriculture sustainability and food security issues. The EU and the Mediterranean countries have set up PRIMA, a partnership to unify national research and innovation efforts to tackle these challenges.

In the Mediterranean basin region, climate change is bringing with it a number of challenges in terms of agriculture sustainability and therefore food security:

• Competition for scarcer water resources between agriculture and other uses such as increasing tourism and drinking water.
• Population growth and lower agriculture production mean that the region increasingly relies on international food markets. This reduces job opportunities in agriculture, people then leave the area to places where agriculture is still an important economic sector. This trend is also increased by the lack of efficient local agri-food value chains.
• Previous intensification and specialisation trends in farming have led to unsustainable practices such as the use of chemical fertilisers that deplete soil organic matter and increase dependence on foreign inputs. Specialisation has also reduced agro-biodiversity and thus resilience to climate change due to the disappearance of more adapted local varieties.

These challenges are complex, and need research and innovation efforts in order to tackle them. In the 2012 Euro-Mediterranean conference on research and innovation held in Barcelona, participating countries and the EU decided to do just this. They created a joint research and innovation programme. The programme “PRIMA” aims at setting a long term strategy to tackle common problems to the Mediterranean countries.

PRIMA

The Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (PRIMA) brings together 11 EU countries and 8 non EU countries. PRIMA has been built around a common Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) which sets the basis of PRIMA works and calls which will start in early 2018.

SRIA is based on 3 main pillars which are translated in 3 main thematic areas for research and innovation. They address the main challenges in the Mediterranean basin:

• Develop integrated and sustainable water management strategies,
• Develop sustainable farming systems
• Develop sustainable local agro-food value chains.

Specific research and innovation fields where identified within these 3 main thematic areas.

In addition, transversal research and innovation areas are also being worked on such as:

• Soil sustainability
• Food security
• Digital revolution
• Socio-economic research stakeholders involvement
• Capacity building

The programme aims to reach a series of outcomes such as the adoption of solutions, cooperation, the development of innovative policies, the development of businesses, the achievement of sustainable development goals, the development of job opportunities and the development of tools for data management.

An open online survey was carried out in May 2017 to gain feedback from PRIMA stakeholders so as to better define the main technical and implementation features of the initiative.

http://ec.europa.eu/research/environment/index.cfm?pg=prima