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EcoReadyMasuria: agricultural innovations in Masuria
On 14 June 2024 in Ełk, at the headquarters of the association Local Action Group LIDER IN EGO, a kick-off meeting was held to initiate a new project coordinated by RIC Pro-Akademia entitled: "Mazurian Living Lab Eco-Ready: Co-creating Resilient Food Systems for Central and Eastern Europe", with the acronym EcoReadyMasuria. The project aims to prepare farmers for the challenges of climate change by co-creating and testing new practices and technologies.
As part of EcoReadyMasuria, RIC Pro-Akademia and partners University of Warsaw (Faculty of Biology - Masurian Center for Biodiversity and Nature Education in Urwitałt), Local Action Group "LIDER IN EGO" and Farm Mirosław Gontar will co-create and test new, more climate-resilient farming methods and technologies together with farmers. Among other things, workshops, field experiments and interviews with farms are planned.
The mission of EcoReadyMasuria is to support local farmers in adapting to climate change. Farmers will be better able to cope with extreme weather conditions through new technologies and practices, which will translate into increased food security and biodiversity conservation. Climate change presents agriculture with many challenges, from droughts to heavy rainfall. EcoReadyMasuria will help farmers innovate to ensure the stability and sustainability of food production. By working with scientists, farmers will be able to benefit from the latest advances in technology and knowledge, which will have a direct impact on the future of the region.
The next steps in the EcoReadyMasuria project are the organisation of the first EcoReadyMasuria workshop in September 2024, where participants will evaluate and select the best solutions for their farms, analyzing their potential benefits, risks and opportunities. In the coming weeks, surveys will also be launched among farmers in Masuria who produce important agricultural products for the region: maize, red clover, barley, sunflower and milk.
EcoReadMasuria is one of 10 living labs set up as part of the Europe-wide project "ECO-READY: Achieving Ecological Resilient Dynamism for the European food system through consumer-driven policies, socio-ecological challenges, biodiversity, data-driven policy, sustainable futures". The ECO-READY project is designed to prepare the European food system for new challenges in times of change. The new knowledge created and tools developed by the project serve to reduce the vulnerability of the European food system and increase its adaptive capacity to climate change, extreme climatic conditions and other external shocks.
This sub-project has received funding from the project ECO-READY (grant agreement No. 101084201) through its Open Call, funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.