Crop production is the most crucial primary agricultural production activity for food and nutrition security. In 2011, around 70% of the global calories intake per capita per day derived from plant-based products. Besides its importance for direct human consumption, crop production is also crucial for producing feed for livestock and, increasingly, also for aquaculture.
WP 4: Drivers and data: primary agricultural and fisheries production
General Information
Work package 4 will develop a system understanding of the drivers of and prepare, collect and deliver the data for assessing FNS and its sustainability at the level of primary agricultural and fisheries production. The Collection of data and topics are all related to primary production.
It will provide
- an in-depth analysis of the drivers of crop production in the EU;
- an in-depth analysis of the drivers of livestock production in the EU;
- an in-depth analysis of the drivers of seafood production in the EU;
and will establish a consistent accounting system for emission leakages, prepare an EU-wide spatially disaggregated database at the sub-regional level and collect and deliver data at the level of primary agricultural and fish production
Latest Publication
Deliverable 4.6: Spatially explicit farm and environmental indicators at a scale of 1 km x 1 km
Land use diversity and soil erosion are amongst the aggregated variables required for describing environmental sustainability in the domains ‘biodiversity’ and ‘natural resources’. Both aggregated variables need to be quantified at high spatial resolution. The CAPRI model is able to do this, but the calculation procedure required improvements. This report describes basic features of the methodology, scrutinizes deficiencies in the current implementation and identifies possibilities to update and improve the method.
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Deliverable 4.5: The drivers of crop production at regional level in the EU: an econometric analysis
Crop production is the most crucial primary agricultural production activity for both food and nutrition security. Around 70% of the calories per capita and day come from plant-based products. The report provides a qualitative assessment of drivers of crop production and a quantitative analysis of crop yields in the EU. Crop yield trends are largely positive throughout the EU. Average efficiencies in yield exploitation are between 70 and 80% depending on the crop. Climate has mixed effects on crop yields and farm size, fertilizer and plant protection all clearly positively affect crop yields.
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Deliverable 4.7: Database on farm-level production and sustainability indices for assessing sustainable diets
This paper demonstrates that SUSFANS metrics for assessing the environmental sustainability of the European food system can be effectively produced and applied to assess policy measures and potential innovations that aim at achieving sustainable food and nutrition security in the European Union. The analysis points at important issues that need to be taken into account for the further development and application of metrics.
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Newsletter 2
The second newsletter answers research questions like: "What do European consumers think about sustainable food?", "Can information beef up the demand for meat alternatives?" or "Can we bank on seafood for a healthier food consumption?" It gives short summaries of the deliverables and papers, published during the last month
Take a lookNews in work package 4
Can we bank on seafood for a healthier food consumption? In-depth analysis of the european fishing sector
Seafood is generally a healthy protein alternative in a diet. Official dietary advices often recommend to eating more seafood and vegetables and less beef. At present, seafood accounts for around 17 percent of the global population’s intake of animal protein and nearly 7 percent of all protein consumed. However, there are sustainability challenges remaining for a range of production systems that still need to be resolved.
Review Article: Operationalising the health aspects of sustainable diets: a review
Shifting towards a more sustainable food consumption pattern is an important strategy to mitigate climate change. In the past decade, various studies have optimised environmentally sustainable diets using different methodological approaches. The aim of the present review was to categorise and summarise the different approaches to operationalise the health aspects of environmentally sustainable diets.
Analysis of crop production in the European Union
Crop production is the most crucial primary agricultural production activity for both food and nutrition security. Besides its importance for the direct human consumption, crop production is also crucial for producing feed for livestock and increasingly also for aquaculture.
Most generally, crop production is primarily determined by the interaction of land use and crop yields. Both land use and crop yields are affected by various drivers. The deliverable on drivers of crop production consists of two main parts.
Work package leader
Work package member
© Copyright 2015. METRICS, MODELS AND FORESIGHT FOR EUROPEAN SUSTAINABLE FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY - SUSFANS
H2020-SFS-2014-2,
Grant 633692