Bringing together pioneers of conservation agriculture and organic farming in Spain

In February 2023, farmers from Catalonia joined for a workshop with the ConServeTerra team. The aim of the workshop was to build a “co-constructed mental model” of conservation agriculture (CA) in the Catalan context.

Visit to experimental sites in Oued Zem, Morocco

In February 2023 a group of researchers of the project team of ConServeTerra met in Morocco to visit the experimental sites in Morocco (Figure 1). A major part of the project relies on field experiments on experimental stations and local farms to gain insights on certain Conservation Agriculture (CA) practices on soil quality and crop productivity.

Farmer Field Schools in Spain

ConServeTerra puts a lot of emphasis on Farmer Field Schools (FFS), as such they are  regularly organized in the participating countries. During 2022 two sessions were conducted in Spain. For 2023 around 8 sessions are planned. At these sessions a fixed group of interested farmers meet, discuss and learn about soil.
Emmeline Topp

What is soil in the eyes of farmers?

The past six months have been a busy time for the teams conducting the farmer surveys and Q-study. Across Morocco, Spain and Tunisia, our teams have contacted more than 500 farmers to survey their relationship to soil, their farming practices and sociocultural factors.
Johannes Augustin

ConServeTerra Annual Meeting

After one year of collaboration, a first Annual Meeting with all project partners was scheduled from 2nd to 5th November 2021 in Marrakesh, Morocco.  Due to Covid-restrictions the meeting had to be reorganized and was held as an online event. The project stakeholders made the best of it anyway and shared ideas to improve the project further.
Albert García Macian

Socio-cultural factors of soil management

Socio-economic factors are known to affect farmers’ uptake of good farming practices, including those for soil management, such as minimum tillage. It is equally important to identify the influence of socio-cultural factors, such as traditions, values, perceptions and mental models.

Strategic tillage, crop establishment and soil moisture

What does strategic tillage mean? No-till (NT) is a valuable practice in many agroecosystems, but potential problems can occur such as subsurface acidity, water-repellent surface soils, nutrient stratification, some soil-borne pests and diseases like slugs or nematodes, and herbicide-resistant weeds.

ConServeTerra participates at the first Open FiBL Day

On the 27th May the first Open FiBL Day took place under the motto “Organic agriculture and beyond” as a virtual event. Anyone interested to learn more about the work of FiBL at national and international level and across national borders was invited to take part. In more than 40 parallel sessions a large variety of different projects, services and scientific results were presented.