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Abstract: Human intervention on land enhances the supply of provisioning ecosystem services, but also exerts pressures on ecosystem functioning. We utilize the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) framework to assess these relations in European agriculture, for 220 NUTS2 regions. We put a particular focus on individual land system components, i.e. croplands, grasslands, and livestock husbandry and relate associated biomass flows to the potential net primary productivity NPP. For the reference year 2012, we find that 469 g dm/m2/yr (38% of NPPpot) of used biomass were harvested on total agricultural land, and that one tonne of annually harvested biomass is associated with 1.67 tonnes dry matter (dm) of HANPP, ranging from 0.8 to 8.1 tonnes dry matter (dm) across all regions. EU livestock systems are a large consumer of these provisioning ecosystem services, and invoking higher HANPP flows than current HANPP on cropland and grassland within the EU, even exceeding the potential NPP in one fifth of all NUTS2 regions. NPP remaining in ecosystems after provisioning society with biomass is essential for the functioning of ecosystems and is 563 g dm/m2/yr or 46% of NPPpot on all agricultural land. We conclude from our analysis that the HANPP framework provides useful indicators that should be integrated in future ecosystem service assessments. ; We gratefully acknowledge funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under GA Nr. 773901 "Understanding and improving the sustainability of agro-ecological farming systems in the EU" (UNISECO), and the Austrian Ministry for Sustainability and tourism under the European Research NETwork on Sustainable Animal Production (ERA-NET SusAn), Project 101243 "Steering Animal Production Systems towards Sustainable Future" (AnimalFuture), funded by the Horizon 2020 Program of the European Union (SusAn/0001/2016). T. Morais was supported by grant SFRH/BD/115407/2016 from Fundaç˜ao para a Ciˆencia e Tecnologia.

Presentation at the UNISECO H2020 Final Conference, 18-19 March 2021 https://uniseco-project.eu/final-conference UNISECO is a European research project aiming to develop innovative approaches to enhance the understanding of socio-economic and policy drivers and barriers for further development and implementation of agro-ecological practices in EU farming systems. Learn more about the project: https://uniseco-project.eu/ This project has received funding from the European Union's H2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 773901.

The UNISECO project aims to provide recommendations on how the sustainability of agro-ecological farming systems (AEFS) in Europe can be promoted. These recommendations build also upon scenario development and assessment of territorial effects of a large-scale implementation of agro-ecological farming innovations in the EU. This Deliverable describes in detail the scenarios and related storylines developed with stakeholders and first results from the biophysical modelling of the five scenarios using the BioBaM model, and the economic modelling. Five storylines were developed in a participatory process involving all project partners and project stakeholders. The main determinants of the storylines are their level of implementation of agro-ecological farming practises and the localisation of food system (i.e. level of trade within the EU and globally). The first storyline Business-as-usual, extends the dynamics and critical aspects of current agri-food systems into the future and highlights current policy barriers to the expansion of agro-ecology. The second storyline, Agro-ecology-for-export, depicts a future in which medium-large agricultural farms and large companies in the food processing and distribution sectors promote a weak agro-ecological approach as a marketing strategy. The third and fourth storylines describe a future in which food systems are localised but for different reasons. In both these storylines, local foods, regardless of production methods, are given priority over agro-ecological farming practises. In consequence, production practises remain similar to current ones or further intensify. Localisation-for-protectionism do this for reasons of rising nationalism and protectionism, and calls the centrality of the EU into question and promotes further re-nationalization of agricultural policies. The Localisation-for-sustainability on the other hand promotes local food system not for protectionist reasons, but in an ambition to increase food system sustainability and resilience by cutting food ...

The UNISECO project aims to provide recommendations on how the sustainability of agro-ecological farming systems (AEFS) in Europe can be promoted. In this deliverable D4.3, the results from a large-scale implementation of various agro-ecological approaches, from single practices such as undersowing in cereals to more systemic approaches, such as agroforestry, and to a full agro-ecological transformation of the agri-food system are presented. Based on the case-study results from WP3, various bundles of agro-ecological innovations have been identified in a multi-step stakeholder process. Suggested practices and approaches ranged from plot and farm-level to whole food-system level and a selection of those was then chosen for implementation in the two biophysical mass-flow models BioBaM_GHG_EU and SOLm. In BioBaM_GHG_EU, an option space of 432 options was built by combining several variants of a) more or less mixed-farming approaches integrating crop and livestock production; b) livestock diets (fully grass-based ruminant production); c) manure management (conventional, biogas digesters, etc.); d) hedges and undersowing on croplands; e) grassland use in a land sharing or land sparing variant with vegetation regrowth; d) reduced grassland use intensity in high nature value farmland. In SOLm, a detailed implementation of agroforestry systems was implemented, based on parameters from state-of-the-art literature, such as the different crops and trees varieties used and their respective shares per hectare agroforestry, the yield potential of agroforestry, and the performance regarding a number of environmental indicators (e.g. water use, NH3 emissions, C-sequestration). In all these scenarios and options, a number of environmental and socio-economic indicators was assessed, such as land use, GHG emissions, nutrient surplus, etc. or food supply and calorie and protein provision self-sufficiency. Key results show that many agroecological futures are possible in the EU without compromising food security and with ...